


in all this atomic pageantry

by dalmatienne



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, First Time, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, More Horses Than You Would Expect in a Space Story, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalmatienne/pseuds/dalmatienne
Summary: “Hey bud,” MacKinnon says softly into the comms now that Barrie is hooked up to the private channel, “you with us?”Barrie’s pupils are blown wide, the soft brown of his irises nearly eclipsed by black, and his cheeks behind his mask are flushed red.  He stares dazedly at the canopy above him, chest heaving with deep, gasping breaths.  Just as Gabe leans forward to get his attention, Barrie turns to look at MacKinnon and groans.“Tys?”“Shit, you’re hot,” he says, voice deep.  He flicks eyes up to look at Gabe just behind Nate, groans again, and says, “Shit, you’re both hot, oh my god.”





	in all this atomic pageantry

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery) in the [boysarehot](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/boysarehot) collection. 



> If you recognize your name in this story, please, for the love of all things holy and good, click away now. This is entirely a work of fiction.
> 
> It takes a village. Like, a big village. A city-sized village. Shout out to everyone in #AvsFam and the Boys Are Hot challenge for pushing me to write beyond my initial comfort zone and answering all of my dumb questions and hypotheticals. Another shout out to my roommate, who acted as my resident space battle and military rank expert. And finally, I would be nowhere without my cheersquad and betas [Elle_belle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elle_belle) and [Mythisea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythisea) who worked with me as I yelled my way to an even bigger monstrosity than the last story.
> 
> Some housekeeping:
> 
> 1\. If there are two things in this world that I know very little about, it's the Colorado Avalanche and space. Clearly I have yet to write a story concerning a subject that I know anything about.
> 
> 2\. I do not have a strong background in space/sci-fi. This story is basically Star Trek (reboot) mixed with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a strong flavor of [Star Drunk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPrtQ9AdoM0). To quote Elton John, _"All this science, I don't understand."_ Most of the science in here is made up so just roll with it.
> 
> 3\. Title is from "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" by A Perfect Circle.
> 
> 4\. There is a brief scene in which I unfairly slander Arizona Coyotes GM John Chayka. Please do not base any opinions of him off of this story.

* * *

 

**C O M P U T E R > D A T A B A S E > A V A L A N C H E > P U R P O S E**

_The SFS_ Avalanche _is a mid-size peacekeeping and exploratory starship with a crew of fifty humans. This starship operates primarily in the Circinus Galaxy and reports directly to the Space Force starbase_ Denver _. The_ Avalanche _is a young, speedy starship capable of Warp-8. Its defense and offense capabilities are considerable, as it is equipped with particle barrier shields, ion cannons, photon torpedoes, and phasers._

_Most missions assigned to the_ Avalanche _are diplomatic in nature. As such, all crew members underwent a minimum of two years’ training in strategic communication and xenocultural sensitivity in their academy training prior to assignment to the_ Avalanche _. Ongoing training in these fields are mandatory. The_ Avalanche _also completes scientific discovery missions; many crewmembers are therefore also trained scientists in specific disciplines._

_Captain Gabriel Landeskog is the commanding officer of the_ Avalanche _._

 

* * *

 

The starbase _Denver_ hails the bridge in the middle of first line shift 82 Standard days after the _Avalanche_ left its main docking station. Gabe’s done nothing but stare out of the window screens of the bridge at the stars and think about their last disaster of a mission, so he’s glad for the distraction.

“Incoming transmission from the front office, Captain,” Ensign Zadorov calls from his station on the comms. “It’s Lieutenant Commander Gardner.”

The entire bridge breathes a sigh of relief and Gabe calls back, “Project the transmission to the main screen, ensign,” before reaching up to fingercomb his hair into place.

“Aye, Captain.”

Zadorov taps away at the screens, a holoimage of his family hovering next to the controls, and the video image of the Lieutenant Commander replaces the stars of the Central System of the Circinus Galaxy on the main screen.

Lt. Com. Gardner gives the bridge of the _Avalanche_ a warm smile, her eyes crinkling up and her teeth flashing white at them. Her bright red hair is done up in a practical braid and her ‘Force uniform is immaculate. Lt. Com. Gardner is Gabe’s favorite officer on the _Denver_ , especially with the _Avalanche_ ’s track record. She is incredibly smart, and while she doesn’t sugar coat their interactions, she does want him and the whole crew to succeed. Consensus on the _Avalanche_ is that everyone enjoys reporting to Lt. Com. Gardner as the point of contact for the _Denver_ —as much as anyone can enjoy reporting back to the ‘Force, anyway.

“This is Lieutenant Commander Gardner of the _Denver_ star base. _Avalanche,_ do you copy?”

Gabe smiles back at the image of Lt. Com. Gardner. “This is Captain Landeskog of the starship _Avalanche_ , we read you loud and clear, Lieutenant Commander.” He waves jauntily, and she laughs. “What’s new with the _Denver_?”

“The usual, I’m afraid. We’ve got several big plans in motion, but a lot of them rely on wait-and-see missions. Speaking of which, we received the report of your last mission. I’m sorry to hear that it did not turn out as well as the higher ups would have liked. A follow up mission will be scheduled in a few Standard months. I’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available.”

“Affirmative,” Gabe says, staring at the screen ahead of him and carefully not meeting the eyes of his crew. They all performed admirably on the last mission, and he is immensely proud of them, but sometimes their best isn’t good enough.

“Let’s not worry too much about that now,” Lt. Com. Gardner says, moving on seamlessly without dwelling too much on the previous mission. “The _Denver_ does have a new mission for you. It’s relatively quick, just visiting an M-class planet not too far from you to do some data extraction. Additional mission information will be sent to the _Avalanche_ shortly.”

Gabe thanks her warmly, and she wishes them the best of luck before ending the transmission. The screen in front of the bridge once again displays the stars and systems visible in front of the ship and conversations pick up once more. The crew is eager to move on to the next mission.

Sure enough, mere moments after Lt. Com. Gardner ends her transmission, the small screen in front of Gabe’s chair lights up with an incoming message from the _Denver_. He scrolls through it and thinks of who he’ll assign to the away parties. The planet is fairly small and previous expeditions to the planet have not revealed any intelligent life; three separate sites were established, so Gabe will need to assemble and prepare three different away parties for the sake of expediency.

After some discussion with his Chief Science Officer Iginla, he decides to send Chu, Rooney, Bourque, and Wilson to the site at the planet’s magnetic north pole, and Barbiero, Warsofsky, Iggy, and the Lamoureux twins to the site on the southern coast of the planet’s singular continent. For the last away party, to a site in one of the dense forests in the continent’s interior, Gabe assigns Rantanen, Johnson, MacKinnon, Barrie, and himself.

It’s been a while since Gabe’s gone on a mission like this, with no diplomacy, no expectation to bring another ally into the ‘Force. It’ll be relaxing, almost, like shoreleave with a little extra work.

Gabe catches up with MacKinnon and Barrie in the rec room after his meeting with Iginla. They’re sitting at one of the hoverchess boards and may be playing, but are most likely just fucking around.

“You two ready for another mission?” Gabe asks, nudging MacKinnon with his hip until he makes room on the bench. 

“It’s not gonna be like last time is it?” Barrie grouses. He plucks one of the hoverpawns out of the air and shakes it at Gabe. “I swear if I have to see Josty try to hook up with a sentient cocktail waiter robot again, I’m sending in my resignation.”

“You think you had it bad? It took me so many sonic showers to get the smell of the homeplanet ambassador’s puke off me.” MacKinnon grabs the hoverpawn out of Barrie’s hand and places it back on the board. He turns to give Gabe a beseeching look. “My uniform was unsalvageable, man, I had to shoot it into deep space.”

“Relax, it’s not a diplomatic mission.” Gabe moves a silver starship hoverpiece on the board to take the gold hoverpawn MacKinnon just replaced, smirking at Barrie’s indignant squawk. “We’re just gathering data from a couple sites on a small planet. No seasick ambassadors, no aliens or robots for Ensign Jost to get to know romantically. Probably. He’ll remain on the _Avalanche_ during the mission.”

Gabe hands his portable screen over to them and they abandon the hoverchess board entirely in favor of scrolling through the details. MacKinnon looks up with raised eyebrows.

“I don’t see why I’m going too? Like, you’ve already got a xenobotonist, xenozoologist, and Tyson the dirt fucker—”

“Hey!”

“—But what do I add to the party?”

“Your pretty face,” Gabe says with a grin, gesturing at the Lieutenant’s face which is, indeed, quite pretty. MacKinnon’s cheeks go rosy and Gabe softens his smile. He adds, “It seems like a relaxing mission, and I think you deserve a break to go planetside, Lieutenant MacKinnon. You did an incredible job piloting us through that asteroid belt a few days past.”

MacKinnon’s all flushed and pleased, and Gabe feels his chest warm at the sight of his first officer basking in the praise. Barrie is still trying to come off as offended by the dirt fucker comment but Gabe knows he is super proud of his best friend, too. Not just any pilot in the ‘Force could have gotten their ship through that asteroid belt without a scratch.

The _Avalanche_ doesn’t have the best track record with missions, but Gabe wouldn’t trade his crew for the universe.

“I’ll have the full mission and details sent to your stations in a few minutes,” Gabe says as he stands up from the bench. He has the rest of the away parties to meet with, and then he has to go over the engine report with Lieutenant Commander Bernier. “Mission briefing will be right after first line shift tomorrow.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Barrie says with a lazy salute. On nearly anyone else it would hint at insubordination, but with his bright eyes, quirked eyebrows, and the upward tick of his mouth, Barrie manages to make it look charming.

Nevertheless, Gabe rolls his eyes at them dramatically and says, “As you were, gentlemen,” as he walks back out of the rec center.

It takes twelve full line shifts, or three Standard days, to get to the planet. It truly is quite small, at least compared to their home planets, but is beautiful to view from the bridge. Its sea is a deep burgundy while the continent varies in color from white arctic deserts to forests almost blue. Scans and the information from the _Denver_ indicate that the air pressure and gravitational pull of the planet are almost identical to the artificial environment on the _Avalanche_. However, oxygen made up a much higher percentage of the planet’s atmosphere, meaning that members of the away parties would have to wear masks to regulate their oxygen intake.

The parties board the away crafts and make for the data extraction sites. Lieutenant MacKinnon carefully pilots them to the area identified as the landing site in the denser forest, Ensign Rantanen chattering away about the colors of the leaves and the sheer size of the fauna.

Reports from other ships’ teams discussed the lack of large predatory creatures on the planet’s singular continent; while the ocean was teeming with nightmarish super sharks and mega-eels and crabdolphins, the continent had mostly smallish tree-dwelling rodents, yet innumerable types of fungi, and a wide variety of harmless flora. Even so, Gabe has his phaser tucked into his holster, as does every member of their party. He’d rather be safe than sorry. Besides, he knows his crew’s luck.

Upon disembarking from their away craft, Rantanen and Lieutenant Johnson prepare to visit a nearby colony of space gophers that previous researchers tagged as noteworthy.

“They’re not space gophers Tyson. They live in the trees, and they don’t even look like gophers,” Johnson says with a roll of his eyes from behind his mask. Barrie peers over his shoulder at the holoimage of the creature on Johnson’s screen

“Well maybe the gophers on AM-32 are fucked up, because they definitely look like the gophers on CAN-19.”

MacKinnon peers over Johnson’s other shoulder.

“Gophers on CAN-2 look like that too,” he says, grinning as Johnson brushes both him and Barrie away.

Johnson hugs the screen closer to his chest. “They can’t be gophers unless they burrow in the ground, that’s _the_ defining characteristic of gophers!”

“They can burrow in the canopy, EJ, let some poetry into your soul,” MacKinnon drawls. He rests an elbow on Barrie’s shoulder as they lean against each other.

“Why are you arguing with me? I’m the resident xenozoologist here, and I am the only one qualified to say whether or not a foreign species is gopher-esque, and this species is _not_ gopher-esque!”

Gabe takes a look at his own screen and can’t help but agree: the creatures look a lot like the gophers on CAN-99.

Rather than agree with Barrie and MacKinnon—which would have gotten him targeted in even more of Johnson’s retaliatory pranking for sure—Gabe presses a handful of sample tubes into Barrie’s hands and nudges him in the direction of the soil data extraction site.

“Rendezvous will be in two hours. If you run into any problems, let us know through the main channel and send us your coordinates through the scanners,” Gabe says to Johnson, switching the comms system on his mask onto the private channel for him, Barrie, and MacKinnon. Johnson and Rantanen both give perfunctory salutes and head towards the space gopher colony.

Barrie steals MacKinnon’s scanner to run scans on the surrounding area’s soil composition, making excited noises as the scanner pings with each new result. It’s unbearably endearing.

Soon enough, the scanner picks up a trace amount of an important rare space mineral and Barrie insists that they follow it, for the sake of better understanding the geological composition of the planet and its effects on the biodiversity of the living organisms. Gabe allows it—it’ll be a good addition to the report he sends to Lt. Com. Gardner—but doesn’t pretend to understand all of the multisyllabic edaphology words spilling out of Barrie’s mouth. He and MacKinnon were both physics-track prior to joining the ‘Force.

The vein of the space mineral leads deeper into the dark blue of the forest, where the vegetation grows closely together, twisting vines and fallen leaves concealing much of the forest floor. The going is slow since they have to feel out nearly every step, and Gabe tries to push down the sense of unease growing in him. He shares a look with MacKinnon, who appears equally on edge in a dark unknown forest with limited visibility. MacKinnon cuts his eyes over to Barrie, who has paused to scrape up another soil sample from under the blue-brown detritus, and his look turns fondly exasperated.

Two and a half kilometers into following Barrie blindly into the forest, Gabe finally calls it.

“Lieutenant Barrie, we can’t spend anymore time on tracking this stupid rock of yours.”

Tyson stops right in his tracks, swinging around to give Gabe an offended look.

“Excuse you, it’s a really important rock, _Gabriel_ ,” Tyson says snottily, using Gabe’s first name like he only does when he thinks he’s making a point. “Nate’ll back me up on this, won’t you, buddy?”

“We’ve wandered pretty far away from the rendezvous point,” Nate says, almost apologetically. “We’re due back soon to meet up with EJ and Rants. It might be time to give up on the mineral, Tys.”

“I can’t believe I’ve been betrayed by my two best friends,” Barrie wails, throwing his arms in the air and turning away from there. He takes one step forward into the vegetation and disappears from sight with a cut-off yelp.

“Tys!”

“Tyson!”

Gabe and MacKinnon dart forward to the spot Barrie was before he tumbled out of view, pushing aside the thick blue brush to reveal the crumbling edge of a small cliff. Heart pounding, Gabe pushes down the impulse to blindly follow after Barrie and he knows without looking that MacKinnon is trying to maintain a cool head as well.

They hear grunts and cut-off shouts over their comms before abruptly cutting out.

“Lieutenant Barrie, what is your status?” Gabe demands over the comms. He can hear MacKinnon holding his breath, waiting for a response.

There is none.

“Tyson, status report!”

The comms channel between the three of them has gone staticky, as if Barrie went too far out of range for their private channel to come through clearly.

“Lieutenant MacKinnon,” Gabe says, turning from the cliff to face his pilot. MacKinnon, who had been staring wide eyed and shocky at the place where Tyson disappeared, straightens at the authority in Gabe’s voice. “Cut back some of these vines and bushes. We will follow and recover Lieutenant Barrie.”

MacKinnon breathes in a shaky breath and says, “Aye, Captain.”

He draws his phaser, switches it to its sabre setting, and begins cutting back the thick branches and vines until they can start to make their way down.

By whatever luck they still have on their side, the gradient of the cliff is neither steep nor is it deep, and they can easily follow the path of crushed vegetation Barrie left in his wake.

As they stumble down the slope, Gabe tries to contact him again through the private channel.

“Lieutenant Barrie, do you copy?” The weird static can still be heard over the channel, but no response from Barrie. “Tyson, buddy,” Gabe says, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice, “I need you to answer me.”

MacKinnon’s face is drawn and white behind his own mask, and only the the risk of tumbling down and injuring himself keeps Gabe from rushing forward heedlessly.

As they reach the bottom of the hill, Gabe can hear faint groaning. He reaches up to adjust the comms volume on his mask, but realizes that the groans aren’t coming from their channel. MacKinnon cuts one more branch out of the way, revealing a glade filled with large black and purple flowers. Twisty blue vines, blackish leaves the height of a small human child, and petals thick and veiny fill an area about the size of the bridge on the _Avalanche_. The air around them is hazy and purple-tinted, specks glimmering in the sunlight filtering through the canopy. Gabe’s mask whirs as it filters out the new foreign substance.

Beside him, MacKinnon makes a punched out sound and lurches forward. He falls to his knees by a patch of crushed flowers and leaves, and Gabe’s breath leaves his body when he spots Barrie in the ruined vegetation. Barrie is lying spread eagle, his silver and blue suit dirty and banged up but somehow untorn and undamaged. His mask, torn off his head from the tumble down the cliff, lay a few meters away from him. He groans, eyes clenched shut, but doesn’t make any move to get up as MacKinnon kneels by him.

“Tyson, Tys, come on buddy,” MacKinnon says, stroking Barrie’s tangled brown curls, careful not to move him. “You can take a nap when we get back to the _Avalanche_ , but you have to get up now.”

Barrie groans again and Gabe’s concern skyrockets. Barrie is surprisingly tough and resilient and a tumble down a small hill shouldn’t put him out of commission like this. Even with his propensity for theatrics, Barrie should at least be verbalizing his discontent rather than groaning and lying prostrate amongst the wreckage of the alien flowers.

Gabe grabs Barrie’s mask and crouches next to MacKinnon.

“Get his mask back on him,” Gabe says and hands the mask over. “He’s already been exposed to the high oxygen levels and whatever other foreign substances are in the air. The sooner we can get his oxygen levels regulated, the better.”

“Fuck,” MacKinnon says, but works quickly to get the mask in place.

As the mask clicks back on, Barrie’s eyes fly open. Gabe startles into standing but MacKinnon leans closer, a hand pressed to the side of Barrie’s mask.

“Hey bud,” he says softly into the comms now that Barrie is hooked up to the private channel, “you with us?”

Barrie’s pupils are blown wide, the soft brown of his irises nearly eclipsed by black, and his cheeks behind his mask are flushed red. He stares dazedly at the canopy above him, chest heaving with deep, gasping breaths. Just as Gabe leans forward to get his attention, Barrie turns to look at MacKinnon and groans.

“Tys?”

“Shit, you’re hot,” he says, voice deep. He flicks eyes up to look at Gabe just behind Nate, groans again, and says, “Shit, you’re both hot, oh my god.”

“Lieutenant Barrie, I need you to listen to me,” Gabe says, using his Captain voice to catch the lieutenant’s attention. He is relieved to finally hear Barrie’s voice again, but something still seems off about the man. “Are you injured? What hurts?”

“I’ll tell you what hurts,” Barrie says, and pulls himself to a seated position. “How hard my dick gets when you use your Starship Captain holoporn voice, that’s what hurts.”

“Oh,” Gabe says, mind going briefly blank in a way it absolutely should not when he is heading an away mission.

MacKinnon looks up at Gabe and bites his lip before rolling his eyes exaggeratedly.

“Yeah, Tys, we get it, Gabe is the ‘Force’s Next Top Model. Can you get up for me, bud?”

Barrie turns back to MacKinnon, slowly blinking like that time Gabe caught him and some of the ensigns smoking dank space kush, before giving MacKinnon a truly filthy leer.

“For you, Nate, I can always get it up.”

MacKinnon makes an odd squeaking sound and bounces to his feet. Behind his mask, his face is as red as Gabe’s feels, matching Barrie’s flushed cheeks almost identically.

Between Gabe and MacKinnon, they haul Barrie to his feet and give him a perfunctory look over, Barrie humming contentedly as their hands skimmed along his arms and legs. Miraculously, he really does seem fine, aside from dizziness and the disorientation. Barrie leans heavily against the two of them. Gabe’s certain he’ll be fine, even if he is suffering from any minor head trauma or brief overexposure to the high levels of oxygen, as long as they get him back to the rendezvous point.

“MacKinnon, can you pull up the coordinates for the away craft?” Gabe asks and jumps as Barrie’s hand lands precariously low on his back.

“Negative,” MacKinnon responds. He jumps as well, and Gabe can only guess where Barrie’s other hand is. “Tyson had the scanner when he was tracking the mineral. Buddy, do you know where it is now?”

“I think it got—” Tyson swings his head to the side to look over his shoulder and winces. “Yeah, it’s crushed. I think I landed on it.”

Sure enough, the scanner lay cracked and shattered amongst the flattened ruined flowers. When Gabe bends down to pick it up, ignoring an appreciative whistle from Barrie, it doesn’t even make a sad dying beep. Gabe isn’t sure how he will justify the loss in his report to Lt. Col. Gardner later. In fact, he isn’t sure how he will justify any of this in his report.

“Well,” says MacKinnon and he pauses to pull Tyson’s hand higher from where it had been slipping, “As long as we can follow our tracks back, we aren’t in any danger of being lost.”

“Oh, I’m lost alright. Lost in your big blue eyes. Eyeses,” Barrie slurs, leaning back to leer at them both at the same time. “You’re both so fucking good looking, how is that even legal. My two big, blond space stallions.”

“Oh my god,” MacKinnon says faintly.

“Jesus fuck,” Gabe grumbles. This is a lot, even for Barrie, who aside from Ensign Jost is the biggest flirt on the _Avalanche_.

Gabe frowns and peers closer to take a good look at his lieutenant. The pupil dilation, confusion, and dizziness could be chalked up to mild brain trauma sustained while rolling down the hill or brief exposure to the oxygen rich atmosphere when his mask came off. However, neither of those would explain why Barrie would flirt with him and MacKinnon like they were a couple of diplomat’s sons at some space port bar.

Gabe takes another look at the clearing around them and groans as another possibility occurs to him.

“It’s the flowers,” he says, mostly to MacKinnon since Barrie is busy staring at his lips. “He inhaled the pollen when his mask came off. The pollen must be affecting his nervous system and the neurochemical pathways in his brain, making him—”

“Horny on main?” MacKinnon finishes. He turns to give Barrie an unimpressed look. “Why is it always you?”

“You’re both so smart. My smart, beautiful studs.”

MacKinnon gives Gabe a pained expression he understands too well. He sighs and summons his Starship Captain voice again.

“Lieutenant MacKinnon, you help Lieutenant Barrie up the hill. I’ll collect samples of the flowers and pollen for further analysis. We need to get him to medbay as soon as possible in case he experiences any adverse side effects. Well, any more adverse side effects,” Gabe adds as Barrie boldly cops a generous feel of MacKinnon’s ass.

Thirty minutes later—in which Barrie waxes poetic about MacKinnon’s hair and shoulders, Gabe’s beard and thighs, both their asses, and frighteningly enough, Ensign Siemens’ passionate stare—the three of them arrive at the rendezvous point tired and dirty.

Ensign Rantanen stands by the edge of their away craft messing around with his functional and intact scanner, clean and without a scratch on him. He looks up when they enter the clearing and calls out a cheerful, “You’re back!”

“Why didn’t you contact us on the public comms channel? We’re over an hour late.” Gabe does his best to frown at Rantanen, but even as exhausted as he is, he can’t find it in him to be truly mad at the young ensign.

“You didn’t contact us either. Besides, we knew you weren’t in trouble,” Rantanen says, like that excuses anything.

“How did you know?” MacKinnon asks, batting Barrie’s hand away again.

“EJ’s friend told us.”

“Who the fuck is EJ’s friend and oh my god what is that?!”

MacKinnon’s voice goes high and sharp, and Gabe turns on the spot, one hand on his phaser, to see—jesus—Lieutenant Johnson standing face to face with a giant alien creature. Gabe almost wants to compare it to the horses that were prevalent on all of the CAN and AM colonized planets, but it is easily as tall as the away craft, with shimmering red-green scales, and thorny horns, and maybe five eyes? Could it really be compared to a horse if the only things it had in common with a horse were the four legs and hooves?

Johnson maintains eye contact with the terrifying space horse and places his hand on its massive nose.

“We found each other,” Johnson says to the clearing in general without looking away from the creature.

Definitely horse-adjacent then, Gabe concludes.

“And your friend told you that what, we were fine after Tyson fell down a cliff and inhaled a potentially fatal foreign substance?” MacKinnon asks incredulously, moving slowly to place himself between Barrie and the space horse, and then Gabe in front of himself.

“He’ll be fine in six sun degrees.” Johnson’s eye contact with the space horse is unblinking. If he wasn’t engaging in conversation with them, Gabe would be worried that his weapons defense specialist was paralyzed. “I think that translates to ninety minutes our time.”

“And he’ll be okay after that?” Gabe asks, eyes flicking between Barrie’s dazed expression and the sheer unmoving size of the space horse.

“Other than a headache for a day or two, no lasting side effects.”

“God, I wanna choke on your dick,” Barrie says to MacKinnon, and then stumbles forward to grasp at Gabe’s arm. “I wanna choke on both of your dicks. Like, at once. Can we do that? I wanna try. I wanna feel every glorious inch.”

Gabe flushes a deep, dark red and does his captainly duty of steering Barrie onto the away craft and definitely not thinking about the image his slurred words bring to mind. Rantanen, still standing by the away craft, has nearly dropped his scanner in shock, and poor MacKinnon looks to be trying his hardest to sink through to the soft metal core of the planet.

Once on the away craft, Gabe gets Barrie strapped in at his station, ignoring his murmurs of how Gabe is “such a good captain” and “taking care of all of us” and how Barrie wants to “fucking destroy you oh my god.” Gabe tests the buckle and strides back to the open port of the craft.

“We’re leaving the atmosphere in five minutes,” he calls to the three crew members scattered across the clearing. “Get the samples packed away and let’s go. Lieutenant Johnson, say goodbye to your alien horse.”

Rantanen and MacKinnon scramble onto the craft, neither of them meeting Gabe’s eyes as they take the pilot and copilot seats. As one, Johnson and the space horse close their eyes and take a deep breath. They exhale, Johnson drops his hand from the space horse’s nose, and he takes a step away. After a moment, he turns away and walks to the away craft. Before boarding, he raises one hand to the creature in farewell.

The space horse lets out a powerful high-pitched screech that sends waves of static through their comms channels.

Then, it turns and disappears into the dark blue forest.

Johnson takes his seat in the craft and Gabe closes the port. He takes his own seat, and takes a deep breath.

“None of this,” he says to his crew over the sound of the engines starting up, “is going in the official report. We are all going to just forget any of this happened.”

“Aye, Captain,” his crew choruses like the loyal team they are.

Nate pilots the craft into the atmosphere and towards the welcoming dock of the _Avalanche_ hovering in orbit just outside of the exosphere.

 

* * *

 

The report to Lt. Com. Gardner and the _Denver_ , with all of the data compiled from the three away parties with significant but necessary omissions, is well received, and Lt. Com. Gardner congratulates them on a mission well completed. Gabe, MacKinnon, and Barrie all manage to avoid each other outside of their shifts for the next couple of Standard days.

A Standard week after the incident, Gabe receives a message from Lt. Barrie on his personal screen. There’s no subject line or body to the message, just an attached holoimage. Gabe waits to open it until he’s back in his room after first shift. He taps it open and bursts out laughing.

Barrie sent him a holoimage of a cake with the phrase _“Sorry I got high and hit on you, please don’t have me court martialed_ ” written on it in multichrome icing.

Gabe saves it to a separate pad and keeps it in the drawer by his bed.

 

* * *

 

**C O M P U T E R > D A T A B A S E > S P A C E F O R C E > A L L I E D S Y S T E M S > E P S I L O N C I R C I N I > A R I O N D O M**

_Ariondom is the only inhabited planet of the Epsilon Circini star system and as such is very isolated. The civilization’s first contact was with starsailors from Beiaard (star system: Alpha Circini). When Ariondom expressed interest in allying with the Space Force for intellectual and technological reasons rather than for protection, the Beiaardi provided intermediary translation services. Arionids value community and social bonds._

_INCEPTION TO FORCE: SD 2860.314_

_LANGUAGE: Arionish. No direct translation to Standard available at this time._

_ATMOSPHERE: Similar to that of regulation starships. EnvironMasks not necessary._

_GRAVITY: 70% that of regulation starships. GravBoots recommended._

 

* * *

 

Apparently, the data extraction mission impresses the front office of the _Denver_ enough to get the _Avalanche_ another diplomatic mission fairly quickly. Lt. Com. Gardner hails the ship during third line shift and relays the mission to Commander Chu, who catches up with Gabe in the mess hall as he eats breakfast.

Gabe fully admits to not being a morning person, as much as mornings can exist on a starship with artificial passage of time. He’s cranky and totally out of it for the first two hours after he wakes up, incoherent and grouchy until that second caffi-drink hits his system. Barrie and MacKinnon have made fun of him endlessly for it, and Johnson plans his most egregious pranks for the first hour after Gabe wakes up, when he can’t properly defend himself or retaliate.

It’s all very insubordinate of them, and Gabe loves it.

He’s halfway through his NutriVit shake and scrambled repli-eggs at one of the tables near the back of the mess hall, Johnson sitting across from him and either reading a defense systems report or playing some game on a portable screen, when Commander Chu approaches him.

“Captain,” she says with a wry grin and quick salute.

He blinks at her slowly, taking in her pristine uniform and quiet air of competence. A bite of repli-eggs falls off his his fork and onto his uniform pants. He jolts and quickly brushes the repli-eggs to the floor.

“Uh, Commander Chu,” he says, and stands. Maybe standing will make him more awake. “Good morning. I hope your line shift was uneventful. Would you like to join Lieutenant Johnson and me for breakfast? Or, uh, dinner?”

Chu smiles at him, and he knows she would be laughing at him if he wasn’t her commanding officer.

“Thank you for the offer, Captain, but I promised Caro I’d vidcall her and Liv after my shift today. I came by to let you know that Lieutenant Commander Gardner hailed the ship about an hour ago with new mission details. The ship is en route to the Epsilon-Circini star system.”

“That’s a ways away. What does the _Denver_ want us to do there?”

“There’s a small moon orbiting one of the large gas giants of the system, called,” she pauses, clears her throat, says, “well, the average human can’t pronounce the native name of the moon. Most ‘Force documents refer to it as Ariondom. The anniversary of their admission to the ‘Force is is coming up, and Arionids want to celebrate. The _Denver_ volunteered the crew of _Avalanche_ to be the ‘Force’s representatives to this party.”

“Oh,” Gabe says. Diplomatic missions aren’t his favorite, but parties? They can do parties. “I assume Lieutenant Commander Gardner has already sent the full mission briefing to my screen?”

“Affirmative, Captain,” Chu confirms. She glances at his half-finished shake and repli-eggs and grins. “Other than the transmission from Lieutenant Commander Gardner, the shift was perfectly uneventful. I’ll leave you to return to your breakfast.”

Gabe sits back down and pokes at his repli-eggs. They’ve gone cold and somehow even more rubbery. “Thank you, Commander. Give Caroline and Liv our best.”

“Will do, Cap,” she says and exits the mess.

After a few more pokes to the repli-eggs, Gabe gives them up as a lost cause. Over the top of his screen, Johnson gives him a Look, like he’s about to report Gabe’s unsatisfactory breakfast to MacKinnon, who will absolutely nag him about eating properly and how Gabe’s performance as a captain depends on a well-balanced diet. To head this off, Gabe downs the shake and places his dishes on the conveyor belt that leads back into the kitchen. He leaves Johnson to his game in the mess.

Might as well try to get the reading done for the Ariondom mission prior to his shift.

 

* * *

 

Per the mission specs, the _Avalanche_ is to send their senior officers to Epona, the capital city of Ariondom for the planet’s year-anniversary of ‘Force allyship. Ariondom is centuries behind the rest of the ‘Force in space travel technology, and therefore has landing pad areas that can only support smaller crafts and not a whole peacekeeping-grade starship.

Gabe reviews the _Denver_ ’s report on Ariondom and the suggested list of officers, makes a few tweaks, and schedules the mission briefing.

Then he goes to see if anyone in the rec room is up for team building exercises on the training deck.

Diplomatic missions make him antsy, even the party ones.

 

* * *

 

Not everyone on the _Avalanche_ shares Gabe’s distrust of diplomatic missions. As soon as he explains the mission to the senior offices and other members of the away party, as well as the bridge crew that will be left on the ship, the large briefing room erupts into excited chatter.

Even Johnson seems cheerful, despite the fact that protocol for dress uniform requires that he wear his dental prosthetics. 

Gabe distributes the Ariondom reports to the away party and is about to address the bridge crew when Jost pipes up. 

“Wait a second, I’m stuck piloting again? Why do I have to keep the ship in orbit while everyone else parties it up?”

“You’re still on probation, Ensign Jost. You know what happened on that last diplomatic mission.” Gabe actively avoids thinking about what happened on Jost’s last mission. He didn’t see it in person, but Barrie and MacKinnon are master storytellers. 

“She was AI with free will compatibility! That means she was totally capable of consenting!”

“Well your audience sure wasn’t,” Barrie grumbles on the other side of the briefing table. MacKinnon nods along gravely. Despite the upsetting topic of Jost’s AI conquest, both are bright-eyed and excited as they read through the specs on their screens.

“You’ll be cleared to go on the next mission,” Gabe says. 

Ensign Jost crosses his arms and pouts; beside him, with cheeks as red as his hair, Ensign Compher looks somewhat relieved. Gabe thinks something might be going on there, but is more than happy to leave the ensign herding to Barrie, who falls somewhere between being their babysitter and their enabler.

Gabe dismisses the briefing, and the crew slowly flows out of the room, off to continue their normal duties. As usual, Gabe, MacKinnon, and Barrie are the last to leave the room, the two lieutenants flanking their captain.

Throwing an arm over either of their shoulders, Gabe lets himself drop out of the rigid social constraints of being a starship captain, just for the moment.

“Well boys,” he says, and he can feel Barrie and MacKinnon lean into him, warmth spreading through the three of them in the chilly chrome hallway of the _Avalanche_ , “You ready to party?”

“Who do you think we are, _Gabriel_?” Barrie asks, rolling his eyes and not even bothering to hide his smirk. He’s short enough to fit neatly under Gabe’s right arm, like an engine piece slotting right into place. “A couple of cadets fresh out of the Academy on CAN-9?”

“Asking _us_ if we’re ready to party,” MacKinnon says disapprovingly in that soft, savage way of his. MacKinnon’s almost of a height with Gabe, and so he doesn’t _quite_ slot under Gabe’s left arm like Barrie does, but it still feels right. Different, but right. MacKinnon flicks a look at Gabe, his blue eyes flashing, before he leans over and stage whispers to Barrie, “Do you think the space radiation has gotten to him?”

Barrie pulls away from the arm over his shoulder to give Gabe a suspicious look. “Nate, I think you may be onto something. The space radiation is definitely affecting him. Soon, his beautiful irradiated head will be too big to fit under any of our standard EnvironMasks.”

“Oh my god, I will _crush_ you until _you_ won’t fit into the EnvironMasks,” Gabe says, drops the arm around MacKinnon, and tackles Barrie to the floor.

Though Gabe has a few inches on Barrie, the lieutenant holds his own in scuffles, and they grapple across the lightly textured floor of the hallway. 

“Escape while you can, Nate!” Barrie yells between peels of laughter. Gabe tries to flip him, press him face-first into the floor, but he manages to squirm out of Gabe’s hold. “The captain may have contaminated me with his radiation, but it’s not too late for you!”

“O Captain, my Captain,” MacKinnon says solemnly before jumping into the fray.

The three of them tussle on the corridor floor, throwing knees and elbows. Gabe’s the tallest of them, and has a few pounds of muscle on his two lieutenants, but that means nothing when they gang up on him, Barrie pinning down his legs and MacKinnon stretching across his chest to immobilize his arms.

They all freeze when they hear footsteps in the hallway just around the corner before struggling to detangle themselves.

They’re still all tangled up on the floor when CMO Wickenheiser rounds the corner. She doesn’t even break stride, just shakes her head with a small smile and keeps walking.

It probably says something that the crew is used to seeing them like this.

 

* * *

 

“Do we really have to wear these?” Rantanen whines. He stares despondently at his technotranslator, a small black wire and speaker designed to hook onto the front of ‘Force dress uniforms.

“Ariondom is still new to the ‘Force, we don’t yet have a direct Arionish-to-Standard code,” Gabe says, giving his crew in their away craft a look-over to make sure everyone is presentable. “Until enough contact has been made between us, we’re going to have to rely on Arionish-to-Beiaardi-to-Standard technotranslation.”

Johnson makes a disgruntled noise as he pops his prosthetics into place. “That seems unnecessarily messy, linguistically.”

“Supposedly the comms division of the ‘Force is working on it,” Gabe says. “Until then, just avoid metaphors, turns of phrase, all of the weird stuff that usually comes out of your mouth, Barrie. Definitely don’t call each other motherfuckers. We don’t want to confuse the Arionids. And Rantanen, please get your technotranslator on.”

Rantanen tries to attach it again and gives Gabe a wounded, pleading look when it falls off. Gabe sighs, rolls his eyes dramatically, and takes the technotranslator from the ensign.

“One of these days, you’re going to have to learn how to do this yourself,” he tells Rantanen.

“Why would I need to do that when I have my captain here to do it for me?” Rantanen asks, batting his eyelashes.

“Stop hogging the captain, Mikko,” Barrie says, throwing an arm around Gabe’s shoulders. His elbow knocks one of the decorative epaulettes loose. “We all know he’s tall and beautiful, but at least try to share him with the rest of us.”

“Excuse me, _I’m_ hogging the captain?”

“Yes,” MacKinnon says, coming up on Gabe’s other side, “and it’s very rude.”

“Thank you, all three of you, for providing an excellent example of how _not_ to act in front of the Arionids.”

“Well, now _you’re_ being rude,” Barrie says.

Gabe shoves his two lieutenants off him and towards the port of the away craft. “Get off my ship,” he says, frowning to hide a smile. He fixes the stupid epaulette. “And fix your translators!”

“Yes, sir!” Barrie and MacKinnon chorus.

Gabe gets the feeling that it’s going to be a very long night.

Ariondom itself is a dull-colored moon, with neutral-colored vegetation and dark gray seas. The capital city of Epona echoes this color scheme, boasting silver spires and tall off-white domes that seem even darker under the omnipresent clouds that make up the small moon’s troposphere. As dim as the rest of the surface of Ariondom is, the Arionids more than make up for it, as they all apparently glow.

Like, brightly.

In different colors.

To the point where Gabe can’t really make out any facial features, or body shapes, just bright glowing balls and the occasional limb or two.

Gabe’s not sure why _that_ wasn’t included in the ‘Force reports.

The party goes well enough; the conversations between the _Avalanche_ crew and the planet’s diplomats are somewhat broken and stilted, but the Arionids do seem to be quite happy to be part of the ‘Force. Gabe spends his time talking with the diplomatic party of Ariondom, discussing the planet’s agricultural technologies as well as the newest ships they are able to build with the ‘Force’s technology. There are breaks throughout the evening for Arionish dancing and performances, and Gabe excuses himself to wander the art galleries of the diplomatic palace, leaving Johnson to talk about the planet’s biodiversity with one of the Arionids.

“Tell me more about these quadruped warbeasts,” Johnson says as Gabe walks away.

“Shall I tell you of our planet’s tradition of racing the quadruped warbeasts?” the mechanical voice of the technotranslator responds and Gabe can’t help but groan. Of _course_ Johnson would find someone to talk with about horse-adjacent racing.

He’s staring at a particularly interesting piece of Ariondish art—or maybe it’s just a stain on the wallpaper?—when MacKinnon catches up with him. The lieutenant has two flutes of the planet’s sweet but spicy alcohol in his hands.

MacKinnon looks good in his dress uniform, the tight burgundy jacket bringing out the strong line of his shoulders and the bright blue of his yes, and not for the first time Gabe is in awe of the younger man in front of him. He has grown so much in terms of leadership and ability, no longer the fresh-faced cadet barely out of the academy on CAN-2. He holds himself with more confidence, he finally figured out what to do with his hair, and he looks good. _Really_ good. Gabe sometimes forgets how young MacKinnon is.

How young they both are.

MacKinnon hands one of the flutes to Gabe and they toast the Ariondish art (or stain on the wall).

“Where’s Barrie?” Gabe asks, looking around. Outside of their line shifts, it’s strange to see one without the other.

“Tys? He’s working his diplomatic charm on one of the Arionids,” MacKinnon says with an eyeroll, but there’s something tense in the corners of his mouth and the way he grips the delicate Arionish glass.

Gabe glances just behind MacKinnon and sees Barrie flirting with an Arionid Gabe might have chatted with earlier. They had a distinctive purple glow around them. The two of them are tucked away in a dimmer corner of the gallery, making the Arionid’s glow that much brighter and distinct. The Arionid motions their drink flute to Barrie, who leans forward to take a sip, covering their hand with his own. Even from this distance, Gabe just _knows_ that Barrie is looking up at the Arionid through his thick eyelashes, giving them his bedroom eyes.

“He’s really laying it on thick, isn’t he?”

“‘Force help me, he’s back on his bullshit,” MacKinnon grumbles. Gabe feels his mouth thin in agreement and he takes another sip of the drink to stop from saying anything else. He feels jealousy spike in him and he pushes it back down. They’re on a mission. He needs to stay professional.

Across the gallery, the purple Arionid says something to Barrie, who immediately straightens. In the Arionid’s lilac glow, his cheeks are flushed bright red. The Arionid trills, a sound Gabe has identified as something like laughter, and pats Barrie’s cheek before gliding away back to the core of the party.

Gabe raises his eyebrows at MacKinnon who looks amused and relieved. “I think he just got rejected.”

“That was almost impressive,” MacKinnon agrees, before waving to get Barrie’s attention.

Barrie slinks back to them, still red in the face, looking more confused than anything else. He steals MacKinnon’s flute and drinks half in one go, coughing after swallowing.

“Aw bud, you strike out? It’s okay, there are plenty more stars in the universe,” MacKinnon says with a comforting pat to Barrie’s shoulder, but there’s something tight in his voice that matches the vague sense of jealousy Gabe feels in his gut.

“Hop off my dick, dawg, I wasn’t trying to hook up,” Barrie, voted _Avalanche_ Crew Member Most Likely to Flirt Their Way Out of an Intergalactic Speeding Ticket, blatantly lies. “Why would I need to hook up with an Arionid when I’ve got two big studs waiting for me right here? We were just talking about the soil of the planet.”

“You tried to pick them up by asking them about their dirt? No wonder you didn’t seal the deal,” Gabe says. He takes another sip of his drink to hide his grin. It isn’t his place, either as Barrie’s captain or as his friend, to tell him who he can and can’t sleep with, but... 

Barrie glares up at Gabe, eyes wide and dark in the dim light of the reception hall.

“No, shut up, it wasn’t like that. It was, no, listen, this is cool,” Barrie says over MacKinnon snorting and rolling his eyes. “These drinks,” he lifts the one he stole from MacKinnon, “are made from these plants that, I guess, absorb specific minerals in the soil that don’t really do anything except, EXCEPT!, when the plants bear fruit and the fruits are fermented in these drinks, they cause temporary bioluminescence in certain life forms. It’s crazy! That’s why the Arionids are so glowy.”

The three of them turn to look around them, taking in the glowing Arionids with new appreciation.

“But get this,” Barrie continues, “the bioluminescence isn’t caused directly by the minerals, or the fruits, just by themselves. The plants have to be grown in very specific soil, the fruit has to be fermented very specifically, and even then, not all life forms can display the glowing.”

Barrie’s face is flushed and his eyes bright and excited. It’s endearing, seeing him talking about obscur foreign soil properties that Gabe doesn’t really care about otherwise.

“And you got all of that out of one conversation?” Gabe asks skeptically.

“With _these_ translators?” MacKinnon sends a critical look at the technotranslator in question, which, fair.

“What can I say?” Barrie preens, “I’m an excellent communicator.”

“Get out of here.”

“Wait, dude,” MacKinnon says, hitting Barrie’s shoulder repeatedly, “does this mean I’m glowing right now?”

Barrie and Gabe squint at MacKinnon. Like Barrie, he is flushed and excited at the idea of glowing. His smile might light up the darkness around him, but other than that, Gabe can’t see any other glow around him.

Gabe shakes his head and says, “Sorry, bud, not yet.”

Before MacKinnon can start to get too down about that, Barrie jumps in with, “But maybe we can get our glow on if we have more of the drinks.” Barrie looks entirely too pleased with his own idea, excited either by the idea of drinking more or glowing. Or both.

Probably both.

“Really?” MacKinnon looks more than ready to be pulled into another of Barrie’s schemes. He looks back at Gabe and says, halfway between plea and challenge, “How about it, cap? You in?”

And Gabe should say no, should shut this down before two of his lieutenants get fall-down drunk at an important ‘Force event in an attempt to glow, should absolutely not be considering joining them, but.

But.

Shit, Gabe really wants to glow, too.

MacKinnon tracks down the server with the flutes and keeps them flowing to Barrie and Gabe. Gabe tries to keep up the appearance of a responsible starship captain, flitting in and out of conversations with the Arionish dignitaries and checking in with his crew. He finds himself returning to Barrie and MacKinnon intermittently, not really thinking about it, but drawn back to them naturally. After a few flutes, Gabe starts to really feel the drinks.

The intoxication he feels isn’t like anything he’s ever felt before: not the clumsy fullness from the synth-hop drinks of CAN-99 or even the bright burning of absobränn on SVE-21. His head remains clear but his entire body is filled with a warmth of feelings and the desire to be close to people. His people. He trails his hands along MacKinnon’s arms and Barrie’s shoulders, warmth bubbling up even more as they drape their arms around his waist and grip his wrists. He feels warm, safe, and like he belongs. Distantly Gabe realizes that this explains a lot about the Arionish emphasis on bonds and relationships. They must mainline this glow drink. Abruptly Gabe turns away from a conversation with one of the Arionid dignitaries to ask MacKinnon and Barrie excitedly, “Am I glowing yet?” Barrie, tucked into MacKinnon’s side, squints his eyes and cocks his head. MacKinnon reaches up with one hand to cup Gabe’s jaw, thumb rubbing along the edge of Gabe’s not-quite-regulation beard as if to stimulate any glowing. Warmth bursts along the side of Gabe’s face and he leans into the touch happily. “I don’t know dude, maybe?” Barrie says, eyes trained on Gabe’s face, following the movement of MacKinnon’s thumb. “Nate, dogg, is our captain glowing yet?” “He’s always glowing,” MacKinnon says, and his mouth twists a little to the side like he’s making a joke. “Our shining star of a captain.” His thumb moves in a wider arc, just barely sweeping along the corner of Gabe’s mouth. “Nate…” “Captain Landeskog?” The hand drops from Gabe’s face and Barrie and MacKinnon take a step away from each other. Gabe turns to the speaker and bows slightly as he realizes that the one who addressed him is the head dignitary of Ariondom. Gabe double checks to make sure the technotranslator is on and transmitting before he says, “My apologies, your honor, I did not see you there.” “All is well captain.” The dignitary makes a grand, sweeping gesture with one of their limbs, lighting up the dimness around them. “Are you and your crew mates enjoying our celebration?” “We are, thank you. The food is delicious, the conversations are warm, and this drink is amazing.” Gabe lifts the flute in one hand and the dignitary’s already glowing visage brightens

“Oh,” they say, “we are so glad you are enjoying our drink. It is our specialty. What do you think of it? We have documented its effects on Beiaardis and our own species, but we have not yet had a chance to examine how it affects humans. I hope you do not think me rude to ask if you have experienced any of its effects?”

Gabe blinks, not expecting this question. He turns back to look at MacKinnon and Barrie reflexively. They look puzzled, but have gone back to leaning against each other. Warmth bubbles up again in Gabe’s chest at the sight and his body somehow aches to lean against either of them. Both of them. In the dim light of the reception area, it almost looks like a faint glow is coming from where their bare wrists are brushing against each other.

“Captain?”

“Pardon me,” Gabe says and turns back to them, giving them his brightest smile. “It makes me feel warm, and very sociable. I want to stand by my other crewmembers, and know they are close. It makes me feel happy. I can see why Arionids favor it so much. I will say, we were hoping that humans could also display the bioluminescent properties.”

The Arionid hums along to his description of the drink, pausing to understand the technotranslator. They look between Gabe and MacKinnon and Barrie, who are still standing just behind him. Gabe still can’t quite see the features of their face when he looks directly at them, but they give off an air of being quietly pleased.

“We are so glad the drinks suit you,” they say, “thank you for sharing your experiences.” They pause again, considering. Gabe’s body itches to take those few steps back to join MacKinnon and Barrie, to increase that pleasant warmth again. “Captain I hope you do not find this observation to be rude, but your bond is very strong. Healthy.”

Gabe’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I do not think I find your observation rude, but could you explain a little more?”

They cock their head, pressing the tips of their fingers together.

“We are limited with a language barrier. I believe you have found that the drink of the Arionids encourages togetherness. You feel physically better when you stand by those who you have relationships with. The glowing is a side effect, not the goal.”

Gabe can hear Barrie and MacKinnon muttering to themselves about that. He reaches back for MacKinnon’s wrist to quiet them.

“Ah! But see!” the dignitary says, gesturing at where Gabe has a loose hold on MacKinnon’s wrist. MacKinnon’s skin is warm against him, and a faint light, so faint Gabe thinks he is imagining it, shines out where their skin touches. “Even with as little drink as you had tonight, you still glow when you are in contact with your——.”

The technotranslator produces an uncomfortably long pause as it struggles to translate the last portion of the dignitary’s sentence before it finally spits out “ _teammate_.”

Gabe considers this. That word seems a little lackluster for how he feels for MacKinnon and Barrie, and doesn’t quite match the warmth flowing through his body just by being near them. They’re his best friends, them and Johnson, and he can’t think of anyone else on his ship that he trusts more.

“That does make sense”, says MacKinnon.

“I’d be offended if you _didn’t_ glow when we touched,” sniffs Barrie.

“You do always seem to glow when the captain’s around,” MacKinnon says to Barrie, who immediately proves his point and flushes.

“Are you saying that I light up your life?” Gabe asks, beaming when he gets _exactly_ the response he was looking for.

“Oh my god.”

“Shut the _fuck_ up.”

“Oh, your bond is so beautiful, so healthy, so strong,” the dignitary says, drawing their attention back to them. “This would settle the minds of any who still doubt our alliance with the ‘Force, to see such a healthy bond amongst its leadership.”

“Well,” says MacKinnon, “that’s good, right?”

“Very,” confirms the dignitary. “Would you permit us to perform a small bonding ceremony here, in front of our high diplomats? It would only take a few moments.”

The three of them blink at each other at the softly glowing face of the Arionid head dignitary.

“What would be required of us?” Gabe asks. The Arionids are very nice and friendly, and he does not suspect any potential foul play, but he would rather not get caught up in any messy diplomatic scandals. Again.

He glances at MacKinnon, who looks cautiously curious, and Barrie, who looks suspiciously thrilled. Both are flushed from the warmth of the glow drinks.

“Very little,” assures the dignitary. “You would stand before the Arionids and ‘Force members here and join hands to demonstrate the strength of the bond. Our cleric would speak words of—” the technotranslator pauses again ominously before continuing, “—team spirit, your hands would be bound loosely in a ceremonial sash, and all will hum their praise. A small ceremony, but it would be greatly appreciated as a gesture of goodwill and understanding between our two cultures.”

A gesture of goodwill and understanding between the two cultures. That sounds very nice and professional, when put that way. It might even impress the higher ups in the _Denver_. Gabe looks over at MacKinnon and Barrie to gauge their interest. Barrie grins and hooks his chin on MacKinnon’s shoulder, pressing his nose against the bare skin of MacKinnon’s neck until a faint glow emanates. MacKinnon huffs a breath, bites his lip, and turns to Gabe with a self-conscious eye roll.

“Sure, why not? It’s important that the Arionids take our commitment to the ‘Force seriously. The best way to do that would be to show our commitment to each other,” MacKinnon says. He seems to reconsider his words and flushes. His wrist twists under Gabe’s loose grip but he doesn’t pull away, instead pushes closer. “I mean, as crewmates. As lieutenants to their captain.”

“Ride or die, man,” Barrie confirms.

Gabe can’t hold back his grin, big and happy, or the rush of warmth in his stomach. He takes a final sip of the drink in his hand and turns back to the dignitary.

“We would be more than happy to perform the ceremony.”

 

* * *

 

“I cannot _believe_ you three got married at the ‘Force equivalent of a fucking rave,” Johnson says on the ride back to the _Avalanche_. He spits his dental prosthetics out and puts them away in a small case he pulled out from his uniform pocket. Johnson runs his tongue over the newly exposed gum, surveys Gabe collapsed in the station seat beside him, and says, “Actually no. I can totally believe you three got married at the ‘Force equivalent of a fucking rave.”

“You act like people getting spontaneously space married is such a rare occurrence,” Gabe says. He’s glad they took the smaller away craft, leaving the rest of the team to pile onto the larger transport craft. He really doesn’t need the senior officers to see this.

Johnson opens his mouth to respond, but a groan from the station next to them interrupts him.

“Hey spaceholes, can you keep it down?” Barrie grumbles from where he’s sprawled across his own station seat, blatantly defying away craft procedure. “That glow drink gave me the _worst_ hangover.”

“ _Spaceholes_?” Gabe pulls himself out of his sprawl to give the collapsed lieutenant a face that is absolutely lost on him. “Barrie, you can’t just shove space into a word and make it a thing.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You literally just did that, when you said we got space married!”

“Because that’s what happened, we all got married on a moon that is floating in _space_. Hence, _space_ marriage. Meanwhile you just shoved space in a word where it had no business being—”

“I’ll shove some space in you—”

“All this yelling is ruining our marital bliss,” MacKinnon says from the pilot seat. He looks a little worse for wear, his hair mussed and a faint shadow of pale stubble dusting his cheeks, but his blue eyes are still clear. “Can we please just enjoy the honeymoon phase first?”

Barrie perks up at that, sitting up in his seat and running a hand through his messy curls. “Honeymoon? Gabe, if we report this to the ‘Force, do we get leave for a honeymoon?”

Gabe is tired enough to let himself make a face at the idea of reporting to Lt. Com. Gardner what really happened during this mission. Barrie makes a face right back.

“No,” Gabe says, “I think we’ve all been space married too often for them to give us leave. Or back-leave, for the other honeymoons we missed.”

“It does happen a lot,” MacKinnon comments, throwing a look first at Barrie then at Gabe. The tension that had melted away from his shoulders while they were drinking the glow drink is back. Gabe wishes he knew how to get rid of that tension permanently.

Johnson looks between the three of them and raises an eyebrow at Gabe. “It does?” he asks.

“People from other planets like to throw us marriage ceremonies, it’s fine, these things happen,” Gabe says, maybe a little too quickly since Johnson’s other eyebrow raises to join its twin by his blond hairline. “It promotes camaraderie and cultural exchange, and it’s...fine.”

Johnson raises his hands in surrender and pretends not to notice that Gabe still has the faintly glowing ceremonial scarf still wound around his wrist.

 

* * *

 

**C O M P U T E R > D A T A B A S E > A V A L A N C H E > S H I P S Y S T E M S > T A C T I C A L D E P A R T M E N T**

_Because of the size of the starship, the Tactical Department of the_ Avalanche _is split into two separately operated groups: Weaponry, or offensive, and the Defense Corps. Weaponry is operated out of the bridge of the starship, and consists of the starship’s phasers, cannons, and torpedo launch. The_ Avalanche _is equipped with standard automatic targeting systems, but these can be overridden by Weaponry officers in extreme situations._

_Unlike Weaponry, the Defense Corps does not operate out of the bridge. The_ Avalanche’ _s particle barrier shields are produced by two terminals located on the port and starboard sides of the ship, just behind the prow. These terminals must each be manned by one or more members of the defense corps during attacks to maximize efficiency._

 

* * * 

 

Gabe is jolted out of his sleep in the middle of third line shift by the emergency sirens blaring through the ship’s speaker system. The lights turned on automatically when the sirens went off and Gabe slaps at the comms button as he pulls on his uniform pants and shirt.

“Captain to bridge, report!” “Captain, Commander Chu reporting. We are being fired upon by multiple hostile crafts.” Her voice is calm but tense, and Gabe can clearly picture her white-knuckled grip on the captain’s station chair. A boom echoes across the comms system and the _Avalanche_ rocks in space, nearly throwing Gabe to the floor. “How soon can you get to the bridge, sir?” “I’m on my way now, ETA 30 seconds. Can you hold them off that long, Commander?” “Who do you take me for, captain?” comes her response and Gabe is relieved. As long as Com. Chu has enough time to politely remind Gabe of her wealth of experience in successful starship battles, the _Avalanche_ will be okay. Gabe takes the shortcut through the crew quarters on his way to the bridge. As he rounds one of the corners of the corridors, he nearly collides with a sleep-rumpled MacKinnon, standing just outside his quarters. Even bleary with sleep, MacKinnon has a look of grim determination, and without thinking about it, Gabe reaches out to grasp MacKinnon’s bicep.

“Lieutenant, I need you to be my pilot right now,” Gabe says, looking into MacKinnon’s blue eyes. “Can you do that for me?”

“Always,” MacKinnon says without a trace of hesitation. He shakes the sleep from his body and they continue to the bridge, staggering every time the ship takes a hit. Com. Chu is sitting ramrod straight in the captain’s chair, giving orders to the bridge crew and listening to reports from the defense corps and engineering over the comms. Other than the tense line of her jaw and the escaped piece of long black hair hanging into her face, she looks cool and composed. Gabe is beyond grateful for her.

“Status report,” Gabe says, peering over the captain’s chair at the station screens. The main bridge screen is staticky with interference and hard to interpret. The captain station screens aren’t much better, but the old-fashioned SONAR scanners provide an accurate enough reading of the hostile crafts near the ship.

“Three hostile scouts are currently attacking the _Avalanche_ sir,” Com. Chu says, pointing at three large moving blips on the screen. “I have instructed Lieutenant Soderberg to perform evasive maneuvers.”

“Attacking us? What’s our location?”

“That’s the thing, sir, we don’t know,” Ensign Kerfoot says from the navigator station. He’s frantically typing away at the screens in front of him, trying to parse through waves of static skittering across his holomaps. “We hit waves of severe electromagnetic interference at the beginning of the shift, and it fucked up our entire navigation system. I have no idea where we are sir,” Kerfoot says, scared and embarrassed.

The ship rocks again as another hit lands.

“Fuck!” Soderberg shouts, yanking at the steering mechanism.

Gabe takes the helm and instructs MacKinnon to take the pilot’s station since he’s the best they’ve got and they need to give their all. Soderberg gratefully gives up the seat and Nate immediately shifts the engines to a higher gear, dodging and turning the ship faster than Soderberg dared using only the SONAR screen. Gabe sends Chu to work with engineering and Kerfoot to get the navigation up and running. He has Andrighetto bring up the view of the stars directly outside the _Avalanche_ on the bridge screen, revealing multiple ships’ worth of space debris floating along next to them, matching the minor, stationary blips on the SONAR. They seem to be in a belt of some sort, with lots of rocky ice chunks making it hard to navigate and steer. They’ll have to navigate the old fashion way until Comm. Chu gets the navigations up and running.

Thank God he grabbed MacKinnon on his way to the bridge. They’ll need one of the best pilots in the ‘Force to get out of this.

Gabe checks all the systems on his screen as Nate pushes the _Avalanche_ to her limits in daring maneuvers. She’s fast, but her bulk against three zippy scouts leaves them too close to dead in the water.

“Defense corps, check in,” Gabe says in to the comms, “How are the shields holding up?”

“Lieutenant Johnson reporting, port shields holding up at 70%. We can take more hits sir, but we don’t have the firepower to fight back. Our cannons and phasers don’t have the targeting systems necessary to take all these scouts out at the rate they’re moving.”

“Copy,” Gabe says. “Starboard shields, do you read? What is your status?”

“Lieutenant Barrie here,” comes the lieutenant’s voice over the comms. Gabe’s heart leaps to his throat and he struggles to push it back down to his chest, to focus on the situation at hand. “Captain, starboard shields have taken significant damage. We’re at 30%. I’ll do what I can but we can’t take much more of this on my side.”

“Understood, lieutenant. We’ll try to cover you from here. Keep up the good work.”

“The shields may be at 30%, but I’ll give it my 110%, Captain Landesnerd.”

“Copy that, lieutenant,” Gabe says, and despite everything, a smile tugs at his mouth. “MacKinnon,” he says to his pilot, “what’s your gameplan here?”

MacKinnon tugs at the controls, and the debris and the stars on the screen spin as he forces the _Avalanche_ into a corkscrew turn, narrowly avoiding one of the scouts.

“There’re too many obstacles around to jump out of here,” Nate says, and pulls up out of the dive. “No clear shot to a warp space and we aren’t anywhere near a major hyperjump. We need to get out of this belt or get rid of those scouts if we want to make it back to ‘Force territory. If we can get defence to support us, we might be able to battle it out in the dirty areas.”

The ship rocks again again as one of the scouts hits them with another shot.

“Port shields at 65,” Johnson yells over the comms.

“Starboard holding steady at 30,” Barrie adds.

“Can I get a report on the armament of these scouts?” Gabe demands, turning to the weapons station on the bridge and gripping his seat as MacKinnon dips and dodges through a pocket dense with floating scrap metal and icy rocks.

“Aye Captain,” Lieutenant Lamoureux-Davidson responds, tapping away at her screens frantically. She tosses her tightly braided blond hair over her shoulder. “They’re scouts, not warbirds. I’m only counting two phasers per ship, plus one torpedo cannon on the lead vehicle. Our shields are enough to take on the phasers ad infinitum without taking any damage, but that torpedo cannon is fucking us over.”

“Do we have enough firepower to take that scout out?”

“Yes, but sir. We’re outside of ‘Force territory now. If we take down any craft, even if they are hostile, that can be seen as an act of aggression. We don’t want to start anything we can’t finish.”

“Fuck, you’re right.” Gabe grips at the seat again as MacKinnon banks around a meteoroid. “Is there anyway we can take that cannon offline without harming the rest of the vessel?”

“Maybe, sir. Johnson was right when he said we don’t have the automatic targeting system needed to take them out. I’d have to calculate the trajectory by hand and—”

“We’re going to have to try it that way.”

Gabe pulls up a screenshare of Lamoureux-Davidson’s calculations in the corner of his screen, following along as the _Avalanche_ darts between rocks in an attempt to shake the scouts. She’s making remarkable progress, calculating almost faster than Gabe can track. In another part of his screen, he pulls up the SONAR tracker. Despite the disadvantage the _Avalanche_ faces with her size, MacKinnon deftly dodges the three scouts. On the bridge screen, Gabe sees shots from the leader’s torpedo cannon shatter a detached hollowed out nacelle floating meters away from the ship.

The station screen beeps again and Gabe looks down. Two of the blips on the SONAR screen are closing in on the _Avalanche_.

“MacKinnon,” Gabe says, “do you see—”

“I’m working on it, Captain,” MacKinnon says. He’s not looking at the SONAR screen.

“MacKinnon—”

“I’ve got it handled, Landy,” MacKinnon says again.

The two blips converge and MacKinnon pulls at the steering controls violently, pulling the _Avalanche_ into a double barrel roll Gabe never thought possible for a ship of her size.

Kerfoot yelps and all of the bridge crew grip their seats as the ship’s artificial atmosphere struggles to compensate for the abrupt change in g-forces exerted on the ship. MacKinnon turns the ship just in time to show the two scouts lock in and fire on each other’s weapons systems in confusion. Blue crackles of electricity snake across the dark metal of the two scouts’ hulls as they lose acceleration and drift harmlessly past the _Avalanche_.

MacKinnon whoops and fist pumps. He turns back to Gabe, the blue of his eyes matching the blue electricity of the incapacitated ships.

“Told you I had it handled, Captain,” he says.

“Shit,” Gabe breathes, “that was some fancy flying, Lieutenant.”

“You bet your sweet ass it was, Landy,” he says. And Gabe can’t help but laugh. Shit.

MacKinnon’s fancy flying’s taken out two of the scouts, but the leader with the torpedo cannon is still out there, dogging the _Avalanche_ turn for turn. In an attempt to lose him, MacKinnon thrusts the _Avalanche_ into a pocket of rusted and blackened scrap metal so densely pushed together it looks like the floating space garbage island of Andromeda-87. It works, for a while: MacKinnon dodging and outmaneuvering the debris as well as the remaining scout, edging closer and closer to the stars everyone on the bridge recognizes as part of ‘Force territory.

Then, MacKinnon has to pull up short to avoid crashing the _Avalanche_ into a massive burnt out husk of a ship that would have taken out the engines.

Then, the scout fires directly on the starboard shield terminal.

Then, the bridge is awash in flashing warning lights and alarms.

A cut off scream echoes across the comms.

Johnson shouts over the comms, “They took out the starboard shield terminal. Shields down on that part of the ship, we have lost all contact with terminal comms.”

Flipping through the error messages popping up on his engineering station screen, Ensign Siemens yells, “Captain, there are multiple leaks and tears in the ship’s hull on the starboard shield terminal. We need to activate the airlocks before we lose any more oxygen or personnel.”

Engaging airlocks would mean trapping any remaining defense corps personnel in an airless void, and if Barrie is still in the terminal, or if he was hurt and couldn’t get out…

In a split second, Gabe makes the call, and, feeling like he’s dying inside, he orders Siemens, “Airlock the rooms around the starboard terminal to prevent loss of personnel and air pressure.”

“Aye captain,” Siemen says and types in the appropriate codes. The warning lights and alarms subside as the airlocks near the terminal engage.

MacKinnon is halfway out of his station chair, ready to abandon the controls. Gabe shouts at him, “Lieutenant MacKinnon, return to your station”

The pilot turns to Gabe, eyes wide in panic and shock. “Gabe,” he gasps, “Tyson is—”

“Get back to the controls, MacKinnon, we still have one enemy scout with massive firepower on our tail.”

“But Tys—”

“Nate,” Gabe pleads, wishing more than anything that he could leave his station to wrap his arms around MacKinnon, “We need you piloting the _Avalanche_. _I_ need you piloting the _Avalanche_. Tyson’s going to be fine but only with you back on the controls.”

MacKinnon stares at Gabe, looking young and afraid, but he visibly steels himself, setting his jaw and swallowing down the panic. He falls back into his seat, grips the controls, and guns it.

Gabe feels sick. He has to swallow down his own nausea and panic, has to ignore that part of his heart screaming _Tyson Tyson Tyson_ , turns to Lamoureux-Davidson and says, “I need you to snipe that fucker. Do not destroy, just disarm.”

Lamoureux-Davidson, without a hint of hesitation, salutes him and says, “Aye captain.”

MacKinnon steers the ship back out of the debris pocket, turning back to the familiar stars of the Circinus Galaxy. He banks and corkscrews the ship only to avoid the determined cannon shots of the remaining scout, focusing more on squeezing as much speed as possible out of the _Avalanche_ ’s hot engines. Even as MacKinnon pushes the ship to her limits, Gabe can see that last blip on the SONAR screen steadily come closer and closer.

The trajectory calculations in the corner of Gabe’s screen pings green.

With a sudden noise of excitement, Lamoureux-Davidson shouts to MacKinnon, “If you can bank right and pull into a dive, that should throw him off long enough for me to get him in my sights and take out that cannon. Can you do that?”

“Affirmative,” MacKinnon says, voice steely.

MacKinnon eases up on the throttle. Just as the last scout is nearly on them, MacKinnon guns it again, banking right and pulling into a dive. A few seconds too late, the scout banks and dives to follow them, but Lamoureux-Davidson has already entered her calculations into the weaponry system.

She presses fire.

Time seems to slow down. It does that sometimes, in space. Gabe can track the bright light of the photon torpedo as it’s shot from the _Avalanche_ , hurtling through space at an incomprehensible speed. The torpedo hits just where it needs to. The cannon on the last scout erupts in sparks and small explosions; blue waves of electricity spiderweb across the black metal hull, just like the other two scouts.

MacKinnon dodges past it and back towards the Circinus Galaxy. When it fails to pursue them any further, the bridge erupts in ragged cheers, many crewmembers shouting their praise at Lamoureux-Davidson and MacKinnon.

The three scouts are left drifting, offensive systems offline and engines stunned. They aren’t destroyed, like Gabe would have liked—would have liked to scatter them across the cosmos, leaving nothing but dust in the starwind, for what they did to the Avalanche, what they did to— But. The _Avalanche was_ technically out of ‘Force territory, and destroying the three scouts would have put them in a galaxy of trouble.

Gabe has bigger space fish to fry.

“Navigation is back online, Captain,” Com. Chu reports over the comms. “Once the nav system is finished rebooting, we’re clear to return to ‘Force territory. I’m on my way back to the bridge now.”

“Thank you commander,” Gabe says, body still thrumming with adrenaline. “Ensign Kerfoot, plot a course out of here.”

“Aye captain.”

Without having to be told, MacKinnon pilots the ship onto the course Kerfoot has plotted on the screens. The entire bridge crew is still on edge and Gabe has to take a deep breath before he turns back to his comms system again.

“Defense corps, report.”

“Captain,” comes Johnson’s voice, heavy with emotion, “I have a loss to report.”

MacKinnon makes a broken noise from the pilot seat and Gabe’s vision starts to tunnel.

“Johnson…”

“The entire starboard shield terminal is destroyed,” Johnson says solemnly, “and Lieutenant Barrie has stolen my seat.”

The entire bridge is silent for a handful of seconds before Kerfoot whispers, “Is he seriously trolling us right now?”

Gabe says, “Johnson, I swear to god if you’re joking right now—”

“Is he okay?” MacKinnon interrupts, pressing down on the comms button at his station so hard his fingertip goes white. “Is Tyson alright? If he’s not, I’m going to kill him.”

“He’s a little shocked and he’s got a few minor electrical burns, but he’ll be fine. He’s a tough cookie.”

Before Gabe can say anything, MacKinnon is out of his seat and running out of the bridge. Gabe doesn’t do anything to stop him; he wishes he could run back to Tyson with him.

Instead he keeps his seat, fingernails biting at the palms of his hands, and turns to Soderberg standing near the back of the bridge. “Are you good to pilot us back to ‘Force territory?”

Soda salutes. “Aye captain.”

Com. Chu enters the bridge, looks at Gabe sitting in the edge of the captain’s seat. She has tidied her hair back into an impeccable bun. She says to him, almost gently, “Captain, if you would like to take the time to check on the rest of the crew and compose the incident report for the _Denver_ , I can hold the bridge until the fourth line shift takes over.”

Gabe doesn’t even try to mask the pure relief that he feels wash across his face. 

“Thank you Commander. Uh,” Gabe stutters, looking across the frazzled but fond faces of his crew as he stands from the captain station. “Good job everybody, I’m very proud of you all, you handled yourselves admirably.”

“They’re in the corridor by the port shield terminal. Go take care of them, Gabriel,” Com. Chu whispers with a wink before gracefully sitting down at the station. Gabe nods at her, takes one final look around the bridge, and at last lets himself run out to find Barrie and MacKinnon. 

It takes an age and a half to run from the bridge to the remaining shield terminal. He doesn’t realize how strung out he still is on panic and adrenaline until he sees Nate and Tyson wrapped around each other in a fierce hug and he feels like the strings holding up his body have just been cut. 

“Don’t you ever fucking do that again, Tyson Barrie, I swear to god,” Gabe says, and it sounds weak and borderline watery even to his own ears.

MacKinnon and Barrie break apart only enough to look over at Gabe, MacKinnon cradling Barrie’s head to his chest, even if Barrie has to crouch a little. MacKinnon’s face is red and a little wet while Barrie’s is as white as a neutron star. Barrie looks a little wild around the edges, sporting blackened patches on his uniform and holding a reddened and raw hand close to his chest.

Gabe wants to gather both of them up in his arms and hide them away from the universe for safekeeping.

“Berate me later, captain,” Barrie says and stretches out his uninjured hand towards Gabe. His voice is scratchy, as if he had been screaming. “Join us in our post space-battle, life-affirming hug.”

Gabe is tired, and still reeling from the early hour and the space battle and the panic and nearly losing his...losing Barrie, and so when MacKinnon reaches out a hand as well and yanks Gabe towards them by his uniform shirt, Gabe falls into their embrace.

He tucks one arm over Barrie’s shoulders and the other around MacKinnon’s waist, nudging his nose against MacKinnon’s temple. He takes one, two shaky breaths and listens to them all breathe, their rhythms slowly calming and matching each other. Gabe closes his eyes and imagines all three of their hearts beating the same tattoo, a three-system pulse ringing out through the universe slow and true.

They stand like that for an immeasurable amount of time, clustered together in the cold corridor of the _Avalanche_ ’s defense systems.

A small pinging sound from Gabe’s portable screen jerks them back to the present. Reluctantly, Gabe drops his arms to check the screen, though he still stays intimately close. Com. Chu has sent him her write up of the incident, and Gabe is immediately reminded of his duties as captain of the _Avalanche_.

“I have to go check in with the other departments and get a report sent out to the _Denver_ ,” he says, unwilling to leave either of them. His eyes fall to Barrie’s hand and he has to push down the instinct to pull them both into his arms again. “MacKinnon, take Barrie to the medbay, get Dr. Wickenheiser to treat those burns.”

“They’re not that bad—”

“You don’t get a say in this, spacebrain,” MacKinnon says and tucks Barrie to him even closer. Gabe nods. MacKinnon will take care of this. Speaking of which…

“Don’t worry about your shifts today. I’ll call up a few ensigns to cover them so you can both rest.”

“No way am I going to sleep anytime soon, I’m still wired,” Barrie says. Gabe can see faint tremors shaking through his muscles. “We’re probably going to watch holovid after Wicksy clears me. Hey,” he says, eyes suddenly brightening, “You should join us after you submit your report.”

“Get your shift covered, too,” MacKinnon says, jaw set but eyes wide and worried. “You went through just as much.”

Gabe looks between the two, their faces looking back at him expectantly. Hopefully.

He can’t say no to them.

“I’ll see if anyone is willing to take my shift,” he says with a smile he hopes doesn’t reveal how his heart tugs. “Whose room will we be watching in?”

 

* * *

 

Barrie’s room is not nearly as messy and unorganized as Gabe was, admittedly, expecting. There are a few souvenirs from the planets they’ve visited scattered on the bookshelves, as well as a few holopics in frames of his family, the crew, him and Nate. Him and Gabe. The three of them together pulling faces at the recorder.

It’s lived in, but it’s not messy.

However, it is just as small as every other lieutenant’s quarters on the _Avalanche_ , with a standard small bed to match. Gabe eyes it skeptically when Barrie pats the approximately thirty square centimeters of free space invitingly.

“Seriously Barrie? You expect three grown men to fit on your bed?” Gabe asks, even as he slips off his shoes and places his screen on the dresser top.

“It’s happened before. It’ll be cozy,” Barrie says. He’s already half-draped across MacKinnon, both of them in casual clothes and looking incredibly soft and inviting.

“Dude, you gotta drop the Captain act,” MacKinnon says, making a face at Gabe over Tyson’s curls. “We get it, you’re a great captain with super amazing professionalism, but this is cuddle time. You’re going to have to call us by our first names if you want to get in on these cuddles.”

“Yeah, no starship captaining in bed,” Barrie— _Tyson_ —says with a grin.

“I thought you’d like it if I was captaining in bed. You _did_ call it my Starship Captain holoporn voice…”

Tyson abruptly turns a bright shade of red and pouts up at Gabe. “I thought we all agreed that we were never going to talk about that again?”

Gabe hums noncommittally and shoves at the two of them to make room for himself on the bed, Nate giggling at them the whole time.

They finally get situated, Gabe propped up against the headboard with Nate tucked into his side, head leaning on his shoulder. Tyson is sprawled across their laps. He has tangled his legs up with Nate’s, resting his head against Gabe’s chest. His hand, bandaged to protect the regenerating skin, lies on the bedspread by Gabe’s hip. The three of them radiate heat, and Gabe feels tethered in a way he has never experienced.

For someone who has spent most of his life adjusting to different planets and space crafts, this sort of gravity is new.

“So, _Nathan_ , what are we going to watch?” Gabe asks. He can see Nate’s eyebrows furrow at the use of his full name.

Gabe can see why they enjoy doing the same thing to him.

“Don’t ask me, dude. It’s T-Bear’s turn to pick.”

“Aww, dogg, you remembered!”

“You literally wouldn’t let me forget. Now pick a holovid before Gabe falls asleep on us.”

Gabe flicks a finger at Nate’s ear. “Hey! I wasn’t falling asleep.”

Nate pats at his hip indulgently. “Sure you weren’t, dude.”

“Just resting your eyes, I’m sure. Ow!” Tyson says when Nate prods him again. “Fine. I think I know what we all need. Computer, boot up the holovid sequence. Play the first title in my queue.”

“Affirmative, Lieutenant T-Beauty,” comes the warm, robotic voice of the ship’s onboard computer. Gabe eyes Tyson incredulously.

“You programmed your computer to refer to you as T-Beauty?”

“Quiet, Gabe, the holovid is starting.”

The lights in the room dim as the holovid starts. Gabe is only half paying attention as two scavenger crafts are shown navigating a pocket of deep, empty space. Nate has snuggled into Gabe even closer and draped an arm across Tyson’s chest, his hand resting just over his heart. With every breath Tyson takes, Nate’s large hand moves with the expansion and deflation of his lungs. It’s nice, a reminder that they’re all still here. Gabe settles a palm on Nate’s hip and runs the fingers of his other hand through Tyson’s curls. They both make sleepy, pleased sounds and push into the contact.

Gabe’s heart does something funny.

Then, the opening title song for the holovid starts up and Gabe can’t help but groan.

“Seriously, Tys, this old holovid?”

Tyson makes an affronted noise but doesn’t bother moving to send Gabe what’s sure to be a withering glare. “Yes, Gabe, seriously. _Titanic: 2500_ is a masterpiece.”

“You literally only like it because of the one song that lasts like ten minutes and gets played on repeat throughout the vid.”

“Don’t open that can of space worms, Gabe,” Nate says as he tucks his nose into Gabe’s neck.

“First of all, _Gabriel_ ,” Tyson says, sitting up and turning to point a finger in Gabe’s face, “Celine Dion is an intergalactic fucking treasure, you heathen. Second of all, you do not have a leg to stand on, making fun of my music when all you do is listen to that classical shit.”

“ABBA is timeless, Tyson, it’s time you recognized that—”

“Oh my god, both of you have trashy taste in music, can you please sit back down so we can watch the holovid?”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“ _Trashy_?”

“You’re the one who listens to overhyped starrappers, Nate!”

“Overhyped? They are lyrical and rhythmic _geniuses_ , Tyson, you just can’t hear them properly because of all the Celine Dion in your ears—”

Gabe leans back against the headboard and closes his eyes, a smile playing on his face. He lets their bickering wash over him in gentle waves. Celine Dion sings about how her heart will go on.

In this overcrowded, overheated, overloud bed, he feels like he belongs.

 

* * *

 

**C O M P U T E R > D A T A B A S E > S P A C E F O R C E > F L E E T > S T A R B A S E S > T H E P H O E N I X**

_The starbase_ Phoenix _is located in the southern reaches of the Circinus Galaxy. It is the eleventh largest starbase in the Space Force. The_ Phoenix _provides docking, refueling, and maintenance services for all Space Force and Space Force-allied ships, but acts specifically as the main hub for the starships_ Coyote _and_ Roadrunner _as well as the starcarrier_ Tucson _._

_In recent years, the_ Coyote _and therefore the_ Phoenix _by extension, has become notorious for its bad luck with missions. The_ Coyote _has failed more than half of its diplomatic missions for the past six Standard years, calling into question the viability of an expensive starbase in this area of the Galaxy._

_The_ Phoenix _is headed by Vice Admiral John Chayka, the youngest Vice Admiral in the Space Force._

 

* * *

 

At over one hundred days of space travel away from the _Denver_ , the Avalanche has to stop at the nearest ‘Force port instead to have its starboard shield terminal repaired.

Unfortunately, the nearest port is the _Phoenix_ starbase, anchored about four Standard days away from where the _Avalanche_ reentered ‘Force territory.

Of all the places, why did it have to be the _Phoenix_?

One day before they dock, in the middle of the second line shift, Gabe calls a full crew meeting in the mess hall. Once everyone is assembled and more or less quiet, he makes the announcement that they will be docked a few days at the _Phoenix_ while the _Avalanche_ is repaired.

“And I feel like I have to emphasize this,” he adds, “There will be, under no circumstances, any fighting.”

The mess hall erupts in groans and shouts. Someone yells, “That’s not fair!” Someone else yells, “But they’re the ones who always start it!” A third person yells, “But they deserve it!”

If Gabe was a betting man, he would have put money on Johnson, Nate, and a small ensign named Girard being the loudest dissidents in question.

“Doesn’t matter!” Gabe yells back, even if he one thousand percent agrees with his crew, and thinks that it _does_ matter. “The _Coyote_ is out of the system for the next two Standard months, and the only personnel on the Phoenix are going to be engineers, mechanics, comms officers, and higher ups that you shouldn’t be fighting anyway. If any of you get caught fighting, I’m going to have to report it to Lieutenant Commander Gardner, and then she will be _very disappointed_ in you. Do you want Lieutenant Commander Gardner to be disappointed in you?”

Gabe has to bite back a smile as the entire crew begrudgingly agree that _no_ , they do _not_ want Lt. Com. Gardner to be disappointed with them. Lieutenant Yakupov looks close to tears at the very idea.

“Good,” Gabe says decisively. “Now that that’s settled, since the _Avalanche_ will be docked, you are all getting leave until the repairs are finished.”

That at least seems to cheer the crew up somewhat, though there are those who are still skeptical about being on the home starbase of the _Coyote_ for longer than a refueling. Gabe dismisses the crew to go back to their duties. He waits at his table for the loud arguing that’s sure to come his way any minute now that the official briefing is over.

“I can’t _believe_ we have to go on leave at that hellhole,” Nate sulks, slumping into the seat across from Gabe and kicking at his ankle a few times. Gabe kicks back once before hooking their ankles together. Nate’s frown lessons considerably and he shoots a small, shy almost-smile up at Gabe.

“If any of the _Phoenix_ even _look_ at any of our boys wrong, I’m going to eject them into deep space, I don’t care if they’re a mechanic, cadet, or the Vice Admiral himself,” Johnson tells him casually. Gabe tries to give him his best Starship Captain Disapproving Frown but Johnson just shrugs. Johnson’s been around the Frown far too long for it to have any effect on him. “You said no fighting, Landy, but you didn’t say anything about deep space defenestration.”

Johnson sits back in one of the free-standing chairs and crosses one long leg over the other.

“Don’t do this to me, Johnson,” Gabe says to him. He tries switching his Starship Captain Disapproving Frown to his Please Don’t Throw Your Best Friend Under The Bus Look and merely gets a gummy smile in response.

“I still don’t quite get why we hate the _Phoenix_ and the _Coyote_ ,” Tyson says, sliding into the seat next to Nate. He picks up one of Nate’s hands, still clenched in a fist, and begins poking and pestering at it until Nate is forced to loosen up.

Gabe feels his own face go soft and happy just looking at them. He nudges Tyson’s knee with the foot he doesn’t have hooked around Nate’s.

“They broke your hand, Tys,” Nate says, mouth going tight around the corners just at the memory..

“Well, yeah, fuck them,” Tyson says. “But see? It’s better now.” He weaves his fingers in with Nate’s and holds their intertwined hands up for inspection.

Nate flushes and rolls his eyes. “That wasn’t even the hand you broke, dumbass.”

“Rude,” Tyson sniffs. He holds out his other hand towards Gabe. “Landesnerd, give me your hand. I need to prove to Nate that I’m fine now.”

“I’m leaving now,” Johnson says with a good-natured roll of his eyes. Tyson waves goodbye at him with his and Nate’s hands. With one hand Gabe flicks him off. Gabe obligingly gives his other hand to Tyson, letting him perform the same ritual and hold up their tangled hands as proof to Nate.

“See? All better.”

Tyson’s hand is broad and warm, and a little bit damp. There is either dirt or chocolate caught underneath his thumbnail. Against his palm, Gabe can feel the faint scarring from the electrical burns that the nanoregenerators weren’t quite able to prevent.

Nate huffs. “Fine. But that doesn’t erase the fact that you got hurt. And they also punched one of our new recruits in the face.”

“Oh. Well, that was shitty of them. When did that happen? Was that before or after I broke my hand?”

“After. They had you on the good stuff while the nanos fixed the fracture.”

“Oh yeah.” Tyson pauses, looks wistfully in the distance. “That was some pretty good stuff.”

“Do you think we could get some more of it?” Nate asks.

Tyson turns to look at him consideringly.

Both of them seem to have forgotten Gabe is there, and also their acting starship captain and therefore presumably against the abuse of controlled substances, despite being physically tangled up with him. Gabe squeezes Tyson’s hand and raises his eyebrows when he swings his gaze back to Gabe.

Tyson shoots a sidelong glance at Nate, nodding his head conspiratorially in Gabe’s direction. When Nate turns to look at Gabe as well, Gabe gives him his best smirk and lets his smile grow as Nate’s cheeks pink up.

They make a pretty picture, the two of them sitting next to each other. Their broad shoulders knock together and their hands are intertwined, pulled into each other’s space. Pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, Nate and Tyson smile at Gabe like they have an inside joke they want him to be part of.

Gabe’s always liked jokes. He has a great sense of humor.

“So,” Nate says, smiling until his eyes crinkle up, “you want to get high with us over leave?”

“I know how to score us some dank space kush,” Tyson adds.

Gabe doesn’t even have to think about it.

“Count me in.”

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately this idea this plan never comes to fruition. As soon as the _Avalanche_ docks at the _Phoenix_ , Gabe receives a transmission from Vice Admiral Chayka, the first officer of the _Phoenix_ and the _Coyote_ , requesting they meet to go over a time issue for the ‘Force. They request he bring his first officer to the meeting. When Gabe tells him this Nate shrugs but can’t hide how put off he is by the idea of doing a mission for the _Phoenix_. 

“I know it’s for the ‘Force,” he says as they make their way through the wide thoroughfares of the starbase. The high ceilings of the hallways are transparent, letting in the lavender and white light of the nearest stars. “But I don’t like the idea of doing a mission for a division we’re not part of. It gives me a bad feeling in my gut.”

Gabe shrugs and their shoulders brush against each other. They’ve been walking closer together than usual, like two stars pulled in by the other’s gravity. 

“Vice Admiral Sakic was copied to the transmission, so as long as they’re following regulations there’s not much we can do but go along with it. We’re on thin ice already since we wandered out of ‘Force territory.”

Nate huffs out a breath in frustration. “I _guess_.” 

“Come on, it’s not gonna be that bad. Probably just a restocking mission for a recently colonized planet, or something like that.”

“Sure,” Nate says, but he doesn’t look convinced. 

The vice admiral’s office, when they arrive, is very different from Vice Admiral Sakic’s office. It’s painted a sandy yellow color and decorated with succulents and other spined plants native to the planets in the nearest solar system. More wide screens let in purple sunlight and holoimages of the vice admiral with his family and members of the _Coyote_ sit on a few floating shelves around the office. It almost seems too young a space for a vice admiral, but that may be because Vice Admiral Chayka is the youngest vice admiral in the league, only a few years older than Gabe himself.

The vice admiral himself is sat in a high-backed hoverchair, the latest of its kind, behind a minimalistic desk with just a few screens on it. Two regular, nonhover, chairs sit facing him on the other side of the desk. Vice Admiral Chayka is tall and lanky, with dark hair and pale skin despite the close proximity of his starbase to nearby suns. When he smiles at Gabe and Nate, there is something awkward about it, and that’s coming from Gabe, who is frequently smiled at by someone who refuses to wear his dental prosthetics.

As they enter the room, Gabe and Nate salute.

Chayka doesn’t need to know how sloppy their salutes are in comparison to the ones they give Vice Admiral Sakic.

Vice Admiral Chayka stands up and insists on shaking their hands. “Please sit down,” he tells them with a gesture at the two standard uncomfortable chairs in front of his desk. When they sit, Nate’s foot bumps up along Gabe’s, out of the vice admiral’s view.

“Boys”, he says, and something unpleasant twists in Gabe’s stomach, same as every other time he isn’t taken seriously as a starship captain due to his age. He knows it’s just the bad blood between the _Avalanche_ and the _Coyote_ influencing his opinion, but he can’t help but distrust the guy. “I know there may be some bitterness between our starships, but the _Phoenix_ is happy to have your team aboard right now, Captain Landeskog.”

“We’re happy to be aboard, sir,” Gabe says, very careful to ignore whatever emotion is simmering just under the surface of his first officer’s face. “Thank you for offering the _Phoenix_ ’s resources for repairing our shield terminal.”

“Of course, of course,” Chayka says with a dismissive hand wave. “We’re all part of the same ‘Force. We did something for you, you do something for us.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe can see Nate stiffen. It isn’t obvious. He only sees it because of how familiar he is with Nate.

“What do you have in mind sir?” Gabe asks.

Vice Admiral Chayka smiles. It’s not very friendly.

Later, Tyson finds them in one of the larger mess halls of the _Phoenix_.

‘Force food is all pretty much the same, no matter the starship. It’s all just NutriVit shakes, the most basic of complex carbohydrates, and replicated protein—usually of the avian variety, but sometimes Gabe likes to treat himself to the bland piscine options. Gabe opted to take a chance with the _Phoenix_ replicator, choosing a plant-based protein from a nearby colonized planet.

He regrets his choice almost immediately. Nate refuses to share his boiled llamrei filet.

Gabe pushes around the jellied bean-like things on his plate between kicking at Nate’s shins and trying to steal bites of the llamrei. Just as he gets his fork past Nate’s spoon defenses, Tyson slides into the open seat beside him. Gabe loses his concentration and the strip of llamrei falls from his fork back to Nate’s plate. Nate smacks the back of Gabe’s hand with his spoon and Gabe turns a frown Tyson’s way.

“I can’t believe my own lieutenant _sabotaged_ me,” he starts but Tyson waves him off.

“This is, like, the opposite of sabotage. You guys ready to get lit?” Tyson asks, loud enough for a couple of _Phoenix_ engineers a table over to glance their way. “I’ve been asking around and I think I have a lead on the dankest space kush this side of the galaxy. The guy’ll probably want to smoke a hoverbowl with us but we can ditch him at the nearest water training deck and do our own thing—”

“Can’t,” Nate says glumly.

“What? Oh are you worried he’ll drown? Don’t worry about that, he’ll be more excited about showing off his speedo to the newest star-recruits—”

“No, he means we can’t all get high during this leave,” Gabe says, flicking a bean in Tyson’s direction. It bounces off the peak of his forehead and back onto the table. 

Tyson gives Gabe a wide-eyed pout, coming off as something between offended and crestfallen. “Why not?”

“We just got out of meeting with the vice admiral, we have to go on a mission while the _Avalanche_ is getting repaired.”

“Like, the whole crew?”

“No, just me, Nate, Yakupov, Rooney, and Lamoureux-Morando. We have to meet up after lunch for the mission briefing.”

“That sucks. I’ll have to get high with this dude without you guys.”

“Don’t you dare,” Nate says, looking highly betrayed. Tyson’s face goes soft and he reaches across the table to ruffle Nate’s hair. Nate grumbles and smacks his hand away. He’s just distracted enough for Gabe to reclaim that bite of llamrei unnoticed.

“Aww, don’t be like that, baby, I was just joking. What sort of mission is it anyway?”

“Diplomatic,” Gabe mumbles darkly, mouth still full of llamrei. Nate squints at him suspiciously and eyes what is left of the llamrei on his plate.

“Oh man, sucks to be you two. Well, think of it this way: no way it can go worse than the mission with Josty and the robot,” Tyson laughs.

 

* * *

 

It goes worse.

It goes way, _way_ worse.

 

* * *

 

It goes like this: Vice Admirals Sakic and Chayka agree to send a small team from the Avalanche, on behalf of both the Denver and the Phoenix, on a diplomatic mission to a previously neutral planet that has recently expressed an interest in joining the ‘Force.

It goes like this: the Svathilfari are notoriously devoted to their traditions and social etiquette, to the point where even guests are expected to follow the customs and rules exactly; any deviance from these customs is viewed as an offense punishable by imprisonment or death.

It goes like this: Gabe and his team are given half of one day to learn all of the traditions and rules necessary for a diplomatic dinner and meeting with the Svathilfari high council.

It goes like this: Lieutenant Yakupov accidentally uses the wrong eating implement at dinner to cut his hengroen steak.

It goes like this: well, Gabe isn’t entirely sure how it goes next, as the entire Svathilfari delegation had jumped to their hooves and attacked the Avalanche team, knocking him out cold before he could react.

 

* * *

 

Gabe wakes up in a cell.

It’s cold and it’s dark and his head _really_ hurts and the Svathilfari are definitely not going to get an alliance treaty with the ‘Force if _this_ is how they treat their guests and/or prisoners.

Trying to think beyond his pounding head, Gabe takes stock of his situation. The ground underneath him is rough and cold, most likely unfinished metal. We he sits up, his joints protest from hours of disuse on an unforgiving surface and his head throbs like he was knocked unconscious but nothing feels broken. He gently touches the back of his head and feels the crunch of dried blood in his hair. It isn’t a severe head wound and besides, it’s already scabbed over since Gabe can’t feel any tacky wetness. He’s pushed up against a wall of the cell, also made of cold rough metal. When he puts a hand to his utility belt, the holster for his phaser is empty. The Svathilfari must have taken it when they threw him in the cell.

Across the cell there is a door, or at least he assumes that it’s a door: a thin strip of light trickles weakly into the cell in a line about a meter in length. It’s not nearly enough to light up the cell, but Gabe’s eyes adjust just enough to take in the shape of the cell. It’s about three meters by three meters, and there, in the corner opposite him, Gabe can see something moving in the darkness.

Gabe shakes his head to clear the remaining fuzziness from his vision and slowly crawls forward.

The darkened form shifts again and groans and the realization hits Gabe like a punch to the stomach that the crumpled form he’s looking at is Nate.

Gabe was not panicking before, but seeing his first officer lying prone in a dark metal cell on a ‘Force-neutral planet?

Gabe freaks the fuck out.

“Oh man, Nate,” he whispers. He scrambles on his knees to Nate’s side, running his hands blindly over his lieutenant’s body to check for any obvious damage. Not finding any, he gently pushes Nate to his back, leaning forward to peer into the dim shadows of Nate’s face as his hands cup his jaw.

Gabe’s hands are shaking and he can’t catch his breath.

“Nate, baby, I need you to wake up for me,” he says, louder.

Nate groans some more and weakly smacks at one of Gabe’s hands. “I need you to not be so loud right now, dude. My head is killing me.”

“Oh thank god,” Gabe says and lets his forehead to Nate’s shoulder. This close, he can hear Nate’s heartbeat and feel his body lift with every breath. Nate’s hand comes up again, this time to run clumsy fingers through Gabe’s hair. It’s soothing, and Gabe takes a deep breath, finally feeling his lungs fill up with air.

“What happened?” Nate asks, still spread eagle on the floor. “I don’t remember anything after the dinner.”

“That’s all I’ve got too.” Gabe turns his head to the side to be heard but doesn’t move any further. “I think Yakupov used the wrong knife at dinner and it offended the Svathilfari, and they attacked and imprisoned us.”

“Poor Teri. Do we know where he is? Or Mads, or Monique?”

“No idea.”

“Shit.” Nate takes a shuddering breath. “Okay, dude, I need to sit up now, would you mind getting off me?”

“Oh?” Shit, Gabe had forgotten he was still kneeled over Nate. He lifts his head and miscalculates how close their faces are. His nose brushes against Nate’s cheek and they both choke back gasps. Gabe sits straight up, scrambles to put some space between them, and says, “My apologies, lieutenant.”

Nate groans and pulls himself into a sitting position. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Gabe asks, squinting through the darkness at Nate’s shape. As big as he is, something about the darkness makes Nate look small.

“Treat me like we’re just colleagues. Come on, Gabe, we’re so much more than that. Tyson and I have been trying to train you out of that habit for like years, dude. Do you not understand how hard it was for us to get you to call us by our first names?”

Gabe immediately opens his mouth to argue with Nate, but pauses, and thinks about how it’s taken him years to feel comfortable enough in his position to call Nate and Tyson anything other than their last names and ranks. Thinks about how, yes, he does try to treat all of the crewmembers the same, being friendly with everyone but avoiding first name usage to not show any favoritism. He knows he is still young to be a starship captain, and that there are plenty other officers on his ship who are just as qualified to be captain as he is, with much more experience. Commander Chu had her own starship before being transferred to the Avalanche, and even Dr. Wickenheiser would be more than qualified to lead.

And he likes Tyson and Nate. He _really_ likes them. He likes Tyson’s constant, loud presence—even when he isn’t saying anything at all—and his unending support. He likes Nate’s quieter, dryer sense of humor and his bright enthusiasm. Tyson’s encyclopedic knowledge of all known minerals found in the soils of hundreds of planets across the Circinus Galaxy and how they affect the life on those planets. Nate’s ability to get any spacecraft to do whatever he needs it to do, from the smallest pod to the hulking berth of the _Avalanche_. 

Nate’s crooked nose and off kilter smile that’s just for him and Tys. The delicate arch of Tyson’s eyebrows when he tells Gabe what he really thinks. 

Tyson’s shoulders and Nate’s thighs. Their eyes

Their _hands_. 

They don’t expect him to always be loyal, quick-thinking, unbiased Starship Captain Landeskog. He can be himself around them, the argumentative, theatrical, ridiculous _Gabe_ he hasn’t gotten the chance to be since before he joined the Academy on CAN-99.

He likes them _so_ much, and because of that, he would never do anything to jeopardize any of their positions within the ‘Force.

“I didn’t want to make things awkward between you and the rest of the crew, if they knew, I mean, _think_ I like you best,” Gabe mumbles.

“You’re so fucking dumb dude,” Nate says and it may be dark in the cell but Gabe swears he can tell that Nate’s blushing that cute pink blush of his. “Sweet, but dumber than those stupid space gophers. Budge up, it’s cuddle time, bitch.”

Gabe has no choice but to wait in utter bemusement as Nate knee-walks across the cell floor to him. Nate gets to him and rearranges him, clumsy in the dark, until he has positioned himself between Gabe and the cold cell wall, pulling Gabe in between the v of his legs so that they’re sitting back to front. Gabe resists it only for a second before relaxing back into the firm warmth of Nate’s chest. Nate loops his arms around Gabe’s shoulders and presses his nose against Gabe’s temple.

“Listen to me,” Nate says, his chest rumbling against Gabe’s back and his lips brushing against Gabe’s ear. “You are a good captain. A great captain. The _best_ captain. You keep your head during missions, you’re accountable, you keep your promises. Your entire crew loves you and would do anything for you. They promised not to fight anyone on the _Phoenix_ for you, and I don’t know anyone in the entire galaxy who could have gotten that promise out of them. Except for Lieutenant Commander Gardner, but that’s beside the point.”

Gabe leans back further, until Nate’s lips are pressed against his cheek and he can feel the bump in Nate’s nose against his hairline.

“But you’re allowed to be more than a captain, you know?” Nate continues. “Me and Tyson, the rest of the crew, we don’t need you to captain us all the time. But me and Tys especially. If you can be more than our captain, we can be more than your lieutenants. Let us take care of you every now and again.”

“I do let you take care of me,” Gabe protests weakly

“Well let us do it more, dude. Eat dinner with me and Tys more. EJ’s been telling me that you’ve been eating like shit, and Tys can work wonders with with the food replicators. Share our dinners instead of stealing off our plates. Watch old starship strategy holovids with me, and sing along to classical music with Tys. Just spend time with us.”

“I can do that.”

“Good.” Nate presses his lips to Gabe’s cheek one more time, like he’s punctuating the conversation with a dry kiss. 

They breathe together, curled into each other against the cold of the cell. Gabe uses one hand to trace along the tendons of the hand Nate’s got slung across his heart. “Thanks Nate,” he says. “You’ll be a good captain one day.”

Nate jolts, and Gabe can feel his blush from where their cheeks are pressed together. “You really think so?” he asks, shyly.

“Yeah.” Gabe tangles their fingers together, and it’s an echo of how Tyson held their hands just a few days ago. Nate’s hand is big and his fingers are calloused from the steering mechanisms. “Maybe not a _great_ captain like me, but definitely a decent captain.”

“Oh my god,” Nate says, shoving at Gabe and giggling, “We were having a _moment_ and you _ruined_ it. I can’t believe I just stroked your ego for ten minutes only for you to turn around and insult me. Tyson is right. Your head _is_ too big for your shoulders.”

Gabe groans and rolls his eyes. “Can both of you stop with the big head jokes? My head is _not_ that big.”

Nate presses his face against Gabe’s hair and mutters what sounds like, “Feels big to me.” Gabe graciously chooses to ignore the comment. He is a kind and generous friend and captain.

Gabe shifts in Nate’s arms, scooting himself down so he can rest his head against Nate’s chest. He dozes for a handful of minutes before Nate nudges him. 

“So what do we do now, Captain?”

There isn’t a hint of fear or apprehension in his voice, just honest curiosity, and Gabe is once again bowled over by Nate’s maturity and goal-oriented mentality. 

“Well,” Gabe says, “I think I’m going to take your advice. I’m going to put my faith in the crew. They’ll rescue us soon.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant when I said that you should let us take care of you,” Nate says dryly. “It’s hard for me to break you out of a Svathilfari jail cell when I’m trapped in here with you.”

“You don’t think Tys can bust us out?”

Nate pauses and then thunks his head back against the metal wall of the cell. “We’re doomed.”

As tired, and sore, and emotionally worn down as he is, Gabe laughs for what feels like ages.

 

* * *

 

They’re roused hours later by the clattering of hooves in the hallway just beyond the cell’s door. A low alarm wails in the distance, accompanied by the sharp sounds of the Svathilfarian tongue. The hoofbeats pass their door without slowing and both Gabe and Nate untense as the echoes recede.

The alarm still blares beyond the cell door, like a distant, angry, rhythmic baby. 

Gabe may have been hit in the head harder than he first thought. 

It’s fine.

“What do you think is going on out there?” Nate asks.

“Maybe it’s a rescue attempt,” Gabe says mildly. Nate makes a considering noise.

The alarm stops.

Minutes later, the clattering of hooves on metal returns. There is still more yelling, but this time the language and the cadence sound far more familiar than Svathilfarian. The hoofbeats stop just outside of their door and, startled, Nate and Gab scramble to disentangle themselves. The lock on the other side of the door beeps and clicks, locking mechanisms disengaging as the door swings open to reveal an irate Svathilfari guardsman and—

“I am never letting the two of you out of my sight ever again, oh my god,” Tyson says, barging into the cell and dropping to the ground in front of them. Gabe winces at the sound of his knees hitting the metal floor of the cell, but before he can open his mouth to say anything, Tyson scoops him and Nate into an impressively tight embrace. “You won’t even be allowed to leave the ship without me by your sides—”

“We’re fine, Tys,” Nate says from where his face is smushed into Tyson’s chest.

“—I will march into the Vice Admiral’s office myself if I have to—”

“ _Tyson_ ,” Gabe tries, patting at Tyson’s back.

“—tell him he can eat my literal whole entire ass if he ever wants to send you on some _bullshit_ mission without me—”

“Lieutenant Barrie?” says an amused-sounding voice from the entrance of the cell.

“Not fucking now, Bissonnette, I’m busy,” Tyson yells back and in the same breath says to Nate and Gabe, “You two are grounded. Do you hear me? Literally grounded. You go directly to my room, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred space dollars.”

“Babe, are you crying?”

“These are tears of righteous fury, MacKinnon, now get your ass off the floor and march out of this cell and back onto the ship. You too, Landeskog, I mean it.”

Tyson finally lets them go long enough for them to stand up and they struggle to their feet. Gabe stumbles as a sudden wave of dizziness washes across him. Tyson catches him, presses in underneath his arm to steady him. Gabe gets a good look at his face in the light from the doorway and his breath is taken away by the look on Tyson’s face: anger doesn’t even begin to describe it. He is incandescent with rage, his face bright red and his dark eyes sparking. Tyson’s eyes catch on something and narrow.

“They _hurt_ you?” he demands, reaching up to follow a trail of dried blood up to the scab on the back of Gabe’s head. Tyson’s thumb catches on the shell of Gabe’s ear and he fights back a shiver. 

“You’re _hurt_?” Nate yelps from the other Gabe’s other side. “You fucking asshole, why didn’t you tell me?!”

“It’s just a bump, I’m not still bleeding—”

“I will destroy their entire planet—”

“Barrie!” the voice says again. Gabe looks up to see another man leaning against the cell’s door frame. He’s tall, with dark hair and a crooked nose and a _Phoenix_ insignia on his ‘Force diplomat uniform. A smirk is pulling at his lips as he stares back at Tyson and as tired as he is, Gabe can’t help but be put on edge by the look on his face. Just behind the man, the Svathilfari guard stands in the hallway, stoic but for the agitated flicking of its tail.

“Barrie,” the man says again, “we’ve got to go. Part of the agreement was that the ‘Force and all its designated representatives get the hell out of Dodge as soon as possible.”

“Fucking fine with me,” Tyson says right back, and manhandles both Gabe and Nate out of the cell and down the hallway. The Svathilfari leads them through the cellblock, its hoofbeats ringing out ominously in the metal hallway.

After a series of labyrinthine turns and twists, their party exits the jail cell building. The lavender sun burns Gabe’s eyes after the day and night spent in the dark cell. The fierce glare Tyson gives to any and all Svathilfari in his line of sight belies how gently he guides them into the cruiser that will take them to their away craft. A thought occurs to Gabe and he feels immediately sick with guilt for not addressing it first.

“What about the others? Yakupov, Rooney, and Lamoureux-Morando?”

“They’re fine,” the _Phoenix_ man says. “They’re back at the starbase. That’s how we knew you were imprisoned. The Svathilfari allowed them to return to the Phoenix but kept you two as the senior officers of the group to serve time for the egregious insult paid to them.”

He uses air quotes when he says “egregious.” 

Gabe still doesn’t trust him. 

“Was our sentence, like, a day?” Nate asks.

“Actually, it was thirty Svathilfarian years,” the man says with a grin and hops out of the cruiser. “I was able to talk them back from that, since I am just that good. Alright fuckos, back on the craft.”

“Huh,” Tyson says as they all board the craft, “You’re not such a bad hostage negotiator after all, Biz Nasty.”

“And don’t you forget it, T-Bear. You owe me one.”

The craft prepares for launch once the man yells at the pilot that their target dead weight has been acquired. Tyson bundles Gabe and Nate away in the seats at the back of the craft, some of the frantic anger in him melting away as he fastens their seatbelts.

He keeps touching them, brushing his hands across their arms and shoulders, pushing fingers through their hair, as if to assure himself that they were really there. Nate finally tugs him down into the seat between them once the countdown sequence starts and he reluctantly buckles in.

Gabe throws an arm around Tyson’s shoulders and he at last relaxes, tilting diagonally in his seat to tuck his shoulder under Gabe’s and press his knee into Nate.

“Where’d you even find this guy, Tys?” Gabe says under his breath with a nod to the guy lounging up front by the awaycraft pilot, another _Phoenix_ crew member. 

“Him? Oh that’s just Biz. Ambassador Bissonnette, technically. He’s my weed hook-up on the _Phoenix_.”

“Did you really get high without us?” Nate asks, hurt. 

“When would I have had time to get high, dude? I was too busy rescuing your pathetic asses.”

He sounds blasé but under Gabe’s arm he’s trembling as the adrenaline leaves his system. Gabe tucks him in tighter, brushing the knuckles of his hand against Nate’s arm on Tyson’s other side.

“ _You_ were busy rescuing us? I thought your weed dealer did all the talking,” Gabe says and Tyson smacks his leg.

“Who do you think talked my weed dealer into hopping on the first available spaceship off of the _Phoenix_ , _Gabriel_?”

“Hey fellas,” Bissonnette calls from the cockpit, “referring to me as just your weed dealer really hurts my feelings. I’m a genuine Space Force diplomatic ambassador.”

They ignore him.

“Thank you for coming to rescue us,” Nate says to Tyson sweetly and pinches his thigh.

“Fine,” Tyson sniffs. “If you’re going to be like this anytime I gallantly rescue you, the next time you get locked away in some alien prison I’m just going to leave you there to rot.”

“It’s what we deserve,” Nate nods along solemnly. Tyson pinches him again and Nate jabs him in the side. They scuffle as much as they can still belted into their seats, jostling Gabe and smiling wide.

Gabe looks at them and knows immediately that he’d give up all the stars in the sky to stay with these two forever. 

 

* * * 

 

**C O M P U T E R > D A T A B A S E > D O W N L O A D S > M E D I A > B O O K S > N O N - F I C T I O N > 5 3 M O R E T H I N G S T O D O I N Z E R O G R A V I T Y**

_[Embarr, Zdraline._ 53 More Things to Do in Zero Gravity _. Ursa Minor: Penguin, 2689.]_

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_...such as the fabled Blizzard treat. Tap here for maps._

_27\. Churn Gultoppr Butter. Though dangerous to obtain, milk from the Gultoppr of Jabucilo produces the smoothest, most decadent butter in all the galaxy. The key to achieving the fluffy texture lies in its production. Most butter professionals in the galactic dairy industry believe that churning Gultoppr milk in zero gravity is the secret to this delicacy. Tap here for recipes._

_28\. Hockey. Originally an ancient gladiatorial sport of Earth Prime, the military peacekeeping Space Force of the Circinus Galaxy has adopted it as a training technique for its officers. Two hovergoals float at opposite ends of a zero gravity training deck. Players are equipped with ultralite sticks and small boosters on their feet, and are split into two squads. The objective is to knock a thick rubber discus into the opponent’s goal while defending against the other squad. Tap here for holovids._

_29\. Kissing. For those life forms in this wide, vast universe of ours who enjoy pressing bits of their bodies to bits of other beings’ bodies in displays of affection, doing so in zero gravity can be quite the experience..._

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* * *

 

The crew of the _Avalanche_ isn’t sad to leave the _Phoenix_. Most of them were ready to riot when they had found out that the vice admiral had sent _Avalanche_ people, including their captain, on what had turned out to be a dangerous mission. 

It had taken Gabe a solid two hours to convince his crew that _yes_ , he and Nate are fine; _yes_ , so are all other members of that mission; _no_ , the _Phoenix_ did not coerce them into going under false pretenses; _no_ , they are not robot replacements of the lost crew members; and _no_ , they are not shapeshifting clone replacements of the lost crew members, Jesus, Kertfoot, are you alright?

Once they leave _Phoenix_ airspace, the _Avalanche_ itself seems to heave a sigh of relief, engines whirring and echoing warmly throughout the ship.

A week after their departure from the _Phoenix_ , Gabe is groggily sipping his NutriVit shake at breakfast when Johnson—EJ, Gabe reminds himself, thinking of what Nate told him—when EJ looks up from the game on his personal screen and says, “I heard something interesting in the biology lab yesterday.”

Gabe looks up from where he was jealously staring at EJ’s warm, fluffy repli-eggs. He hit the exact same buttons on the replicator as EJ, so why was there such a huge difference between the two plates?

“Yeah?” he asks, voice still thick with sleep.

EJ hums and takes a bite of his enviably fluffy repli-eggs. “I was working on some of my xenozoological projects in the science lab earlier. A couple of the xenobotanists were in there at the same time, running tests on the flower pollen from that M-class planet mission a month back, and they got to talking to me about its properties.”

It takes a moment to remember what pollen EJ is talking about, but once he does, Gabe swallows hard at the memory.

“Anything new or interesting?” he asks as casually as he can.

“They found yet another thing in the universe that Kerfy is allergic to.”

“That’s not new. I guess it is interesting. Did anyone let medical know so they can update the records?” They didn’t need another incident like what happened on their last leave on SVE-21.

EJ rolls his eyes fondly. “Yes, Captain _Mom_. But that’s not all they’ve found out about the flower.”

“Oh?”

“Remember how Tys got all affectionate with you and Nate?”

“Affectionate is putting it pretty lightly,” Gabe says. He still catches himself thinking about Tyson’s flushed cheeks and dilated eyes, the way he looked at Gabe and Nate like he was starving and they were a ten course meal. Gabe coughs. “Were they able to confirm that the flower’s pollen acts as an, uh, aphrodisiac?”

EJ sips at his caffi-drink and stares at Gabe for a long time, expression unreadable. Finally he sets the mug down and says, “Not quite. Actually, it’s pretty interesting. Based on Tyson’s reaction, everyone thought that exposure to the pollen would result in the amount of norepinephrine present in the brain to be jacked way up, which would have explained his lowered inhibitions and high levels of arousal.”

“Horny on main,” Gabe nods along, thinking of how Nate first described it.

The corner of EJ’s mouth ticks up. “Sure bud, _horny on main_. But here’s the thing. When they analyzed the samples they took from Tyson when he was in medbay, they didn’t see heightened levels of norepinephrine. In fact, they were pretty baseline for him. So that kind of killed _that_ hypothesis.”

“So are they back to square one?”

“Nope. Luckily for the plant nerds, Dr. Wickenheiser wanted in on the case since she’d never seen anything quite like it. Apparently she’d had to handle shit tons of aphrodisiac flower cases during her residency on CAN-9, but no one as selectively horny as Tyson. She’d taken a few brain scans when he was first admitted to medbay.”

“What’d they find?”

“There was significantly less activity in specific areas of prefrontal cortex and the behavioral inhibitory centers in his brain. Like, highly specific areas. Maps of Tyson’s brain matched images taken of the brains of people who’d been administered powerful, sophisticated truth serums, to a tee. We’re talking the sort of stuff the ‘Force was supposed to stop using after the last Universal Rights of the Galactic Citizen bill was passed. It’s wild.”

Gabe screws up his face in thought. It’d been a few years since his last neurochem class at the academy, and even then it hadn’t been his favorite.

“Okay,” he says slowly, “so the flower itself isn’t making him horny. But it does affect his brain like a truth serum. And that means...he’s really horny? All the time?”

EJ levels Gabe a Look so powerful in its ability to convey how underwhelmed he is, Gabe feels bowled over.

“Gabe, you’re one of the smartest starships captains I know, but you can be a real idiot sometimes. Tyson was hitting on you and Mack, exclusively. He barely looked at Mikko or me, or anyone else in medbay. Think about that.” EJ grabs his tray and stands up.

“Wait!” Gabe shouts at him before he can get to the waste conveyor. “Do you know if Tyson got a report of these findings?”

Something soft passes across EJ’s face and he smiles just wide enough for the gap in his teeth to show between his lips.

“Yeah bud,” he says, “Tyson knows. Mack too,” he adds when Gabe opens his mouth to ask. “Listen, just use that brain in that big head of yours and think it over.”

Gabe frowns thoughtfully as chews on his subpar repli-eggs.

His head isn’t really that big.

 

* * *

 

An entire fleet of Nuckelavee could have attacked the _Avalanche_ during his line shift and Gabe wouldn’t even have noticed, too caught up in the thoughts lingering after his conversation with EJ.

It doesn’t help that Tyson keeps flitting in and out of the bridge throughout first line shift, partially on the pretense to give occasional updates on the defense corps but mostly to poke and prod at both Nate and Gabe. He banters and argues with Gabe as he gives his reports, leaning up against the captain’s chair like he’s claiming his rightful place by Gabe’s side. He trips down into the cockpit to nudge at Nate until he loosens up on the steering mechanism, turns that steely look of concentration to a sunny smile. Gabe rolls his eyes as Tyson goads Nate into making fun of him, but he can’t help the warmth that builds in his chest at the sight of the two of them grinning up at him.

Gabe also can’t help but notice how much Tyson comments on how attractive Gabe is. It had trailed off some after the flower incident, but now is back in full force. Every sentence Tyson utters that isn’t insulting is about how attractive he finds Gabe.

It’s the stupidest way to flirt that Gabe has ever encountered.

Gabe is also unbelievably into it.

Gabe is also unbelievably into how into each other Nate and Tyson are, now that he’s paying attention.

The little touches, the soft looks inbetween jokes, the way they orbit each other like twin stars. When Nate turns back to the controls to steer the _Avalanche_ through a brief pocket of debris, the look of pride and awe on Tyson’s face is a mirror of what Gabe feels for his first officer every day. And as Tyson flits back off the bridge, a chorus of cheerful goodbyes from the rest of the bridge crew sending him off, Nate’s look of fond wanting makes Gabe’s stomach flip.

And then Nate’s eyes dart over to catch Gabe’s stare. Something in his blue eyes lights up and, after biting his lip and blushing, he gives Gabe a flirty smirk and a salacious wink.

Oh.

_Oh_.

That’s a whole _other_ thing to consider.

Gabe thinks about the flower, the glow drinks, the destruction of the starboard shield terminal.

The dark Svathilfarian cell.

_“If you can be more than our captain, we can be more than your lieutenants.”_

God _damn_ it, EJ is right.

He _is_ an idiot.

 

* * *

 

The possibilities spread before Gabe like the starmap of an untraveled galaxy, one that he’s seen before from the screens of his bedroom but never flown through.

He’s never let himself really consider it, but now it’s all he can think of: Nate and Tyson, NateandTyson, Nate and Tyson and him, kissing, touching, _feeling_.

Space is an awfully cold place, but three bodies are warmer than one.

So much could go wrong, but so much could go _so right_. Besides, fortune favors the bold, and this was bold as fuck.

With that thought, Gabe mentally keys in the coordinates to that new galaxy, and punches it.

 

* * *

 

Gabe knows where he’s going, but he doesn’t quite know how to get there.

Now that he can read the situation, he can feel the simmering tension in their interactions. The warmth when Tyson presses into his side during meals, the way Nate’s eyes follow him when he moves around the bridge.

After first line shift one day, he heads into the mess hall when he knows Nate and Tyson will have dinner. Tyson, a man ruled primarily by his stomach, is very consistent with his meal times, and Nate, a man ruled primarily by his best friend’s whims, is very consistent by proxy. Gabe punches in the code for baked piscine protein with long-grain complex carbs into the replicator and tries not to be too disappointed when it comes out soggier than usual. He stares at the plate, shrugs, and makes his way to his usual table in the corner.

Just as Gabe had hoped, Nate and Tyson are already camped out at the table. Tyson gives him a tragic look when Gabe sets his plate down at the table.

“Are you kidding me with this shit, Gabe?” Tyson says and gestures expansively at the plate. “Are you _fucking_ kidding me?”

“What?” Gabe says defensively, pulling the plate closer to himself.

“No, fuck this,” Tyson says and whips the plate out of his hands. He hops up from the table and dumps the plate on the refuse conveyor belt. Gabe stares after him bemusedly before turning a questioning look at Nate.

Nate shrugs and takes a final bite of his own perfectly appetizing dinner. “You’ll see,” he says cryptically through a mouthful of half-chewed replifood.

Even this is endearing to Gabe. Fuck, he’s in deeper than he thought.

Moments later, Tyson returns with a new plate, which he places in front of Gabe with a flourish. It’s baked piscine protein with long-grain complex carbs but _fuck_ , it actually looks appetizing. It looks, and smells, like real food, not something that came out of a half-broken replicator.

Gabe takes a bite and the noise that escapes his mouth makes both Tyson and Nate flush.

“Much better. Can’t have our captain eating subprime replifood every meal,” Tyson mumbles, haughty even under his blush.

“Told you so,” Nate says to Gabe with smirk.

“I should never have doubted you when it comes to Tyson Barrie and food,” Gabe responds with a solid nod.

Tyson squints at them suspiciously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, “so I’m just going to assume that you are both agreeing that I am the greatest repli-chef ever.”

“Sure you are, Tys,” Gabe says with a patronizing pat to the back.

“Mmhmm,” Nate hums noncommittally and takes a quick bite of pasta off Tyson’s plate.

Tyson’s look of suspicion quickly morphs into outrage.

“I cannot _believe_ it. I go out of my way to provide good, home-cooked replimeals to you, my two very best friends in the _entire galaxy_ , and this is how you repay me? With mockery and ridicule? You would _starve_ without me. I should let you—”

“Hey, Tys,” Nate interrupts, placing a hand on Tyson’s arm, “can you go get us some ice cream? It always comes out soupy when I do it.”

Tyson’s mouth clicks shut and his eyes dart down to look at Nate’s hand on the bare skin of his forearm. After a moment, Tyson looks back up and sighs gustily before getting out of his seat again. Pleased, Nate takes another bite of the leftover pasta.

“That was amazing,” Gabe says.

“I know,” Nate responds with a wink.

A large bowl of ice cream thuds onto the table between them. There are two spoons sticking out of the bowl and, when Gabe looks up, Tyson is licking at a third. He already has a smear of creamy vanilla along the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you, Tyson,” Gabe says and bats his eyelashes. Tyson stares at him before rolling his eyes and shoving another spoonful of ice cream studded with cookie dough chunks into his mouth.

“Moocher,” he mumbles, even though he was the one who got three spoons.

Nate grabs a spoon and takes a bite. He makes a face and turns to Tyson. “Cookie dough again? Man, you’ve _got_ to branch out.”

Tyson throws his hands in the air, spoon dripping with melted ice cream. “What is this, Critique-Tyson-Even-Though-He-Provides-For-You Day? Did I miss the memo?”

“I’m just saying—”

“Are you guys doing anything tomorrow?”

Nate and Tyson pause in their ribbing and turn to look at Gabe. They exchange glances and Tyson shrugs.

“We don’t have anything planned. What’s up, dude?”

“Want to play zero-g hockey with me?”

Their faces light up like the sun.

 

* * *

 

The zero-g training deck is empty when they arrive, though that is due less to the crew’s disinterest in it and more to do with Gabe throwing his captain status around. It’s a popular place, but he wants it just for the three of them today. They get dressed quickly, throwing on the required shoulder pads and gloves but foregoing any helmets.

Nate taps his stick against Gabe’s shin as he’s strapping on his booster boots. Gabe looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. Nate just grins and shrugs.

“It’ll be nice playing with you and Tys. It’s been a while,” he offers as explanation. Gabe can feel his own expression soften and he grins back up at him.

“Yeah,” he says.

A roll of VelcroTape hits him in the head and Tyson says, “Come on, we haven’t got all day!”

Gabe grabs his stick and hops to his feet, rushing after Tyson who yelps and runs to the grav-lock chamber outside the deck. Nate follows more sedately behind them, muttering, “I can’t believe _I’m_ the youngest here.”

They start off with passing drills to get reacquainted with the feeling of zero gravity. Their passes go wide, the rubber discus bouncing off the deck walls and lazily drifting until one of them boosts off to collect it, until finally something _clicks_. The booster boots finally have the right amount of thrust, their sticks feel less unwieldy in their hands and more like an extension of themselves, the discus goes exactly where they want it to. The sweet sound of ultralite stick on discus fills the training deck and to Gabe it feels like coming home.

Passing drills locked down, they set up a training simulation: three on three plus goalies, drones with holoprojections playing all the simulated players. They set the drones to the highest training setting and immediately the game devolves into battling it out along the training deck walls. Gabe and Nate each have a few goal opportunities, but the goaltender drone poke checks the discus away each time.

And then Tyson hipchecks one of the forward drones, forcing a turnover that Gabe picks up. He’s on a breakaway until the second forward drone catches up with him. Gabe pulls up short, bounces the discus off the walls and around the drone, and checks to see who’s open as the drone takes a swipe at the discus.

“Pass to me, Landesnerd, I’m open!” Tyson shouts, half on top of the first forward drone.

“You’re open like an airlock,” Gabe yells back, and passes to Nate, hovering just above the goal. The discus clacks against his stick and Nate boosts back from a defender drone, winds up, and slaps the discus home. It smacks into the back of the net and freezes there in the zero gravity.

Nate whoops and throws his arms up, the sudden motion sending him gently somersaulting in place.

“Yeah, babe!” Gabe hollers, and Tyson yells, “Beauty move, tiger!” and they all accelerate towards each other.

They collide and spin through the air, bumping up gently against the training deck walls. They’re tangled up together, shoulder pads and elbows and sticks catching as they all press closer. For a brief moment, Gabe forgets where he ends and where the other two begin, like they’ve become a never ending circle of Gabe-Nate-Tyson-Gabe-Nate-Tyson.

“You fucking beauties,” Gabe laughs. Tyson lifts his head from where he’d pressed his wide grin into Nate’s shoulder, and his face is just, like. _Right_ there.

Tyson’s cheeks are flushed with exertion, eyes dark and sparkling as they catch Gabe’s and suddenly it feels like the air has been sucked out of the training deck along with the gravity. Like he’s really floating out in space without a suit, like the only thing keeping him from floating away entirely are the bright stars living in Tyson’s eyes.

It’s the easiest thing in the universe to lean in and capture Tyson’s lips with his own.

There’s one microsecond in which Gabe is sure that he’s gone too far too fast, that he’s ruined everything, that his career is over, that he’s lost his two best friends.

And then Tyson gasps and kisses back.

Their lips, chapped from the dry recycled air of the _Avalanche_ , catch against each other and Gabe doesn’t know which way is up anymore and he doesn’t _care_. The press of Tyson’s lips against his, the faint damp warmth, each beat of his heart is another new star to chart in this brand new galaxy and Gabe is addicted to these discoveries.

After what could be seconds or hours or the lifetime of a star, they break apart. Tyson’s flushed even more and he grins at Gabe. Gabe wants to feel the press of that grin against his mouth for the rest of his life, that and—

“Finally,” says Nate from where he’s tangled in right next to them. His eyes are wide and nearly all pupil, only the faintest ring of blue around them. He gives them that crooked smile that he saves just for Gabe and Tyson, and his lips are bitten pink.

“Yeah, _Gabriel_ ,” says Tyson breathlessly, “finally.”

“ _Finally_ ,” Gabe mocks, and rolls his eyes, and leans over to kiss Nate.

Nate makes the sweetest sound Gabe has ever heard in his entire life and presses back into the kiss immediately. His enthusiasm shifts them off the training deck wall and sets them to gently spin in the air of the training deck.

The slide of their lips together is so familiar to what Gabe shared with Tyson, but still so intoxicatingly unique. Nate kisses like he pilots: fast, expertly, and oddly sincere. Each press builds on the last and Gabe is more than happy to let himself be steered.

Gabe shakes the gloves off his hands, letting them float off to the corners of the deck. He brings one hand up to cup Nate’s cheek, thumb rubbing against his pale stubble and pressing his fingers along his pulse point. With the other, Gabe reaches out to grasp at the curve between Tyson’s shoulder and neck. He can feel their pulses pound through his fingertips. His heart surges to echo those beats.

Nate makes another sound against his lips, a gloved hand gripping tight at Gabe’s shirt. Gabe pulls back just enough to look at Nate and his breath catches in his throat. Dark lashes fanned out against his cheek, Tyson is pressing soft kisses up Nate’s throat and along his jawline until he catches the corner of Nate’s mouth. Tyson places the bare fingers of one hand—he must have shaken off his gloves at some point too—over Gabe’s on Nate’s jaw and presses. With a sigh, Nate obliges, turning his head just enough to slot his lips against Tyson’s.

Their kiss is sweet, and hesitant, and like it’s something uncharted and delicate. Like the first tentative footsteps onto a frozen pond to make sure the ice is thick enough not to break.

Gabe feels his heart crack wide open with the realization that Nate and Tyson have never done this before.

That this is brand new to them.

That they, maybe, have been waiting for Gabe this whole time.

Gabe can’t keep his eyes off them: the slow slide of their lips in a closed mouth kiss, the delicate inexperienced brush of their noses, the dark shape of Tyson’s eyelashes and the pale blond of Nate’s. Someone’s breath hitches and Gabe feels an involuntary whine build in his throat.

Nate and Tyson break apart, Tyson’s fingers flexing against Gabe’s hand. They blink slowly at each other for a few seconds before Nate looks back to Gabe and breaks into giggles. He brings his gloved hand up to knock Gabe’s jaw closed. Gabe swallows, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth is.

“I like you _so_ much,” he says, voice breaking.

“Yeah?” Tyson says and goes all soft around the edges. Nate looks at the two of them like they hung the moon.

“Yeah,” Gabe says, “both of you. I can’t imagine my life without you two in it.”

“Oh,” Nate says, breathless and happy and flushed.

Tyson pulls them in even closer until their foreheads are touching, the three of them in a safe huddle away from the rest of the universe.

“Us too,” he says, half like he’s telling a secret, half like he’s making a promise.

 

* * *

 

It doesn't take long for the rest of the crew to find out about their new relationship. They're mostly supportive, except the one rec room incident. Neither Tyson’s bed nor Nate’s is big enough to accommodate their holovid nights, but the rest of the crew unanimously banned them from using the rec room sofa after what happened during _Die Hard in the Final Frontier_.

“You’ve ruined the entire _Die Hard_ space-reboot franchise for me,” EJ had told him mournfully the next morning at breakfast. Then he had mocked Gabe relentlessly for all of his hickeys.

Gabe can kind of see where his crew is coming from, but come on: it was just some casual, three-way necking. Hands stayed above clothes.

Mostly.

They’ve seen worse from Josty.

Either way, the only realistic option this leaves is the bed in Gabe’s room which, per his status as the commanding officer of the _Avalanche_ , is suitably large. Weirdly, it feels like taking another step in their relationship, to be watching a holovid alone in a private room, in a bed big enough to fit all of them.

Before Gabe can get too deep into his own head with this line of thinking, the door to Gabe’s room slides open and Nate and Tyson pour in, already bickering over which holovid to watch.

Some things never change.

“Gabe,” Tyson says and swivels around to gesture at him. “Tell Nate that we are _not_ going to watch the new 4D holodoc on early-modern starrappers. He needs to be reminded that holodocs about the _galactic music industry_ are not date-night material.”

Nate makes an affronted sound. “It’s not a _holodoc_ , it’s a _dramatic retelling_. And besides, it doesn’t matter what you think, because it’s my turn to pick, isn’t it Gabe? We can’t let Tyson pick _Titanic: 2500_ again, right?”

Gabe groans. “Come on. We agreed when we said we were going to do this for real that we wouldn’t make anyone pick sides, remember?”

Tyson deflates. “Yeah.” He sends a sheepish smile to first Gabe then Nate as he bounces onto Gabe’s bed. “Sorry about that, dudes.”

“Balance and communication are the most important things in life, yo,” Nate agrees sagely. “So we’re watching my holovid, right?”

“Nope,” Gabe says, “we’re gonna watch what I pick because I’m the captain.”

“What?” Nate demands and Tyson bursts into a peal of laughter.

“Oh my god, you’re such an asshole,” he says delightedly. Gabe hums in agreement.

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Tys,” Nate yells while pointing at Tyson, bright red and clearly sulking. Tyson just laughs harder. “I won’t forget this, Landeskog.”

“Aw, baby, don’t be like that,” Gabe says, wrapping his arms around Nate’s waist and fitting his body along Nate’s back. Nate sighs theatrically but presses into Gabe’s hold. Gabe presses his lips to Nate’s neck, biting back a grin at Nate’s suppressed shudder. 

“Was this your plan all along? Shoot down our holovid suggestions and put on a show of your own?” Nate asks with a hitch in his breath as Gabe bites lightly at the tendon of his neck.

“From where I’m sitting, it’s a good plan, dogg,” Tyson says. Gabe drags as lips across the back of Nate’s neck as he turns to look at Tys. He’s sprawled out across the middle of Gabe’s bed, propped up on his elbows with his legs spread wide. He looks good in Gabe’s bed. Gabe wonders if he can issue an order keeping the two of them in his bed at all times.

Gabe slides his hands down to Nate’s hips, squeezes once, and lets go. “We’ll watch your holovid next time, babe,” he says and, with a final kiss to his cheek, steps away from Nate. 

Gabe walks over to the bed and pesters Tyson to budge up. He arranges themselves to his satisfaction and turns his attention back to Nate. He has an odd look on his face, like he’s equal parts fond, annoyed, and aroused. Gabe can see the outline of his dick in his non-regulation casual pants.

Gabe lifts his arm invitingly and says, “Coming, babe?”

“He wishes he was,” Tyson says sweetly, leaning over to smack a kiss on Nate’s cheek when he settles in with an embarrassed grumble. 

“Shut up, you’re the worst. You both are.”

Despite his heartfelt grumbling, Nate makes himself at home pressed into Gabe’s side, a mirror of Tyson on Gabe’s other side.

Gabe puts on a holovid. It’s _The Fast and the Fusion: Alpha Centauri Drift_.

It’s met with immediate derision. 

“Are you kidding me, Gabe? _The Fast and the Fusion_? You skipped my turn just to put on a shitty ship racing holovid?”

“We literally _just_ watched this the other day,Gabe. Try to be a little creative, eh?”

“First of all,” Gabe says and flicks at Tyson’s ear, “we watched _Fission of the Fast_ last week, so I’m gonna need you to simmer down and check yourself. Second of all,” he continues and ruffles Nate’s hair, “relax. I’ve got a plan.” 

As one, Nate and Tyson turn to give him suspicious looks. He smiles back at them winningly. 

“Hmm,” says Nate. 

“You’re on thin fuckin’ ice, Landesnerd,” says Tyson. 

Nevertheless, they do indeed simmer down and settle in for the holovid.

Thirty minutes later, the holovid is abandoned, as are Nate and Gabe’s shirts and Tyson’s lounge pants.

“So _this_ was your plan,” Nate says with a gasp as Gabe sets his teeth to Nate’snipple. “Fuckin’...holovid and chill.”

“Holovid and chill, really, _Gabriel_?” Tyson bitches, giving him a judgmental look from where he’s tugging at the waistband on Nate’s pants, sucking a bruise into his hip. “What is this, 2700?”

“I’m sorry my seduction plans aren’t up to your lofty standards,” Gabe bitches right back, sitting up to face Tyson. Nate whines. “What did you want me to do, decorate the room in hyperrose petals? Set out scented candles? Put on Celine Dion and give you lapdances?”

“Anything would be better than _The Fast and the_ fuckin’ _Fusion_ and chill—”

“Oh my god,” Nate whines again, “get back down here,” and pulls Gabe into a wet and messy kiss, sucking on his tongue obscenely.

“Shit,” Tyson mutters from the vicinity of Nate’s hips. Nate shudders and groans into Gabe’s mouth as Tyson gets back to work on the hickey.

Gabe leans back from Nate’s mouth just far enough to bite at his lower lip and tell Tyson, “Take his pants off.”

Tyson moans and oh shit, Gabe completely forgot about the whole Starship Captain voice thing.

That’s going to be fun.

The bed shifts and Nate wriggles beneath Gabe as he and Tyson work to get his pants off.

He leans back to get a good look at Nate. He's tall and stacked, the muscles in his core and arms tensing as he shifts around in Gabe's bed, staring up at them with heavy-lidded eyes. Gabe gets caught staring at his thick quads, mind overwhelmed with the possibilities set before him: sucking marks into those thighs just like Tyson had on Nate's hip, shoving his way in between them, dragging down the tight 'Force issued briefs, getting his mouth on...

“It's a lot to take in, right?” Tyson says and Gabe pulls his eyes away from Nate's still covered dick to look at Tyson. Tyson, in his own briefs and navy tee shirt with the collar stretched out and showing off his collarbones, looking just as turned on as Gabe feels.

“Fuck yeah,” Gabe says, and leans in to get a hand in Tyson's messy curls and pull him into a kiss.

Nate's knee thumps into Gabe’s ribs and he grunts and bites down on Tyson’s lip, startling a loud moan out of him. They break apart and Gabe turns to give Nate an unimpressed look. Nate, blond hair ruffled and cheeks pink, gives them his special lopsided grin.

“You were saying something about wanting to take it in?” he says with a gesture to his dick. The grin quickly turns shiteating as Tyson reaches out to fistbump him.

“Nice, dude.”

Gabe rolls his eyes and shifts so he’s kneeling in between Nate’s legs, using his shoulders to knock those thick thighs wider. He reaches up to tug at Nate’s briefs and pauses. He looks up at Nate.

“I want to blow you. Is that okay?”

The look Nate gives him is wide-eyed and immensely satisfying. Gabe can feel his dick twitch against his thumb.

“ _Yes_.”

With a smirk, Gabe pulls Nate’s briefs down, sitting back to help Nate kick them off. Once the briefs are off, Gabe lies down on his stomach and surveys the task at hand.

Nate’s dick is as thick as the rest of him, red and flushed against the pale skin of Nate’s upper thighs. Gabe leans in to press a kiss to the tip and can’t bite back a smile when he hears both Nate and Tyson gasp. With one last look at Nate, he takes the head into his mouth. His eyes flutter at the taste of salt and skin and precome and _Nate_.

“Oh my god,” Tyson says, “am I dreaming? I’ve definitely had a dream like this before. Oh my god, look at how good he looks on your dick, Nate.”

Something swoops low in Gabe’s stomach and he pops off Nate’s dick. His lips feel tender and bruised when he says, “ _Tyson_. Put your mouth to better use and go kiss our boyfriend or suck his nipples or _whatever_.”

When he says this, their faces go soft though their dicks stay hard as ever.

“Boyfriends,” Tyson repeats happily.

“Oh my god, go,” Gabe says and smacks at Tyson's ass before ducking down to get Nate's dick back in his mouth.

He revels in the feeling, the velvety smoothness pressing against his tongue and stretching his lips. Saliva drips down Nate's dick, pooling where Gabe has his hand wrapped around the base.

It's been a while since he's done this, but he has never been harder in his _life_. He presses his erection into the bed in an attempt to find friction.

The air in the room is filled with the wet sounds of Gabe sucking Nate's dick and Tyson and Nate sloppily making out just above him. Nate begins squirming and Gabe throws his free arm over his hips to hold him down. His eyes flutter open and he watches as Nate wrestles Tyson out of his shirt.

Tyson wriggles out of his own briefs and presses in closer to Nate's side, rubbing his dick along Nate's hip. Nate uses one hand to grip Tyson's curls and tug him into another kiss, and the other to reach down and start jerking him off, causing Tyson to moan.

Gabe doubles down on Nate's dick, sucking and licking and swallowing it down as far as he can until Nate is shaking above him. Tyson whines as Nate loses the rhythm on his dick and breaks away from their kiss to pant, "Gabe, Landy, oh my god."

"Oh my god," Tyson echoes, voice tight. Gabe watches from under his lashes as Tyson wraps his hand around Nate's on his dick, tightens their grip and continues jacking himself. Tyson's dark gaze flits between Gabe's face, Nate's heaving chest, and Nate's face. Nate's eyes are slit open, almost all pupil, and focused on Gabe.

Nate's breathy whines and moans get louder as he gets closer to orgasm until he pushes at Gabe's shoulder and urgently chants, "Gabe, Gabe, _Gabe_."

Gabe pulls his mouth off to look up at Nate, finishing him with his hand. He watches Nate's face as he comes, eyes screwed closed and mouth open while he pants heavily. Thick spurts of come land on the quivering muscles of his stomach, some dripping down to make Gabe's grip on his dick even sloppier. Gabe keeps jerking him through it until Nate's legs tremble underneath him, and he whines and pushes Gabe off.

"Fuck, oh my god, that was so hot, jesus," Tyson says, speeding up his and Nate's hands on his dick. Gabe crawls up to lie on Nate's other side, kissing Nate's cheek and sticking his hand down his own lounge pants and briefs. Nate turns his head just enough to kiss him, slow and syrupy in comparison to the urgency of their earlier kiss.

“No no no, wait,” Tyson says suddenly and they break away to look at him. Nate goes to pull his hand away but Tyson tightens his grip.

“You okay, bud?”

“Yeah, just,” Tyson starts, and moans when Nate twists his wrist. “I refuse to come before Gabe's even taken his pants off. That’s _not_ how this is going to go down.”

“I’ve already _gone_ down,” Gabe argues.

Nate makes a considering noise and gives Gabe's pants an unimpressed frown. “Well when you put it that way,” he says to Tyson, completely ignoring Gabe, “it is pretty unfair that the captain lured us into his room and undressed us without even returning the favor.”

Gabe barks out a startled laugh. “Unfair? Your dick was _just_ in my mouth, babe.”

“I call it as I see it,” Nate says. 

“Show us your dick, Gabe,” Tyson pants.

“You are both ridiculous,” Gabe says fondly, but he stands and hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and briefs. Centimeter by centimeter, he drags them down his hips. Something bright and hot burns in him as their eyes follow the movement and his dick gets impossibly harder.

Finally, the elastic waistband is pulled low enough that Gabe's dick springs out, already wet at the tip. Nate whistles lowly and Tyson groans and throws himself back on the bed, releasing his dick to throw an arm over his face dramatically.

"Oh no," he wails, "he's hot!"

"Shut up." Gabe slides the pants and underwear the rest of the way off and walks around to Tyson's side of the bed. Nate makes room for him as he straddles Tyson's hips, leaving Tyson's dick unattended and shiny with precome.

Gabe reaches over and slides his hand through the mess of come still on Nate's stomach before gripping his and Tyson's dicks in one hand. They groan in unison with the first stroke, and beside them Nate makes a low humming noise.

“Look at you,” Nate says to them, and Gabe does: Tyson's body stretched beneath him, the long line of his neck bared with his head thrown back, the muscles of his shoulders bunched up as he grapples for leverage against the headboard. As Gabe increases the rhythm of his fist, Tyson thrusts his hips into the push and pull, rocking Gabe easily despite the size difference.

A hand brushes along Gabe’s thigh and he jolts as it grabs at his ass, a startled moan escaping his lips.

“That’s good, babe, that’s _so_ good,” Nate croons, and Gabe’s stomach goes _liquid_. Without thinking about it, he whines high in his throat and speeds up the hand on his and Tyson’s dick. Beneath him, every muscle of Tyson’s body is tense and his vocabulary pared down to “Gabe,” “Nate,” “oh my god,” and various combinations of the three.

“You’re such a good captain,” Nate continues, voice soft and lisping and dangerous, “taking care of us and touching us just the way we need. You made me come _so_ hard, Gabe, I saw stars. Whole constellations I’d never seen before. Your mouth was made for sucking my dick.”

“Nate,” Gabe moans, hand stuttering.

Nate turns his attention to Tyson. He keeps his hand on Gabe’s ass, urging him on. “Doesn’t Gabe’s hand feel good on you, Tyson? Babe, look at him.” Tyson whines and bucks his hips at the order, but peels the arm away from his eyes to look at Gabe. He’s flushed and his eyes are glassy and wild, like he’s just a few strokes away from losing it. “Doesn’t he look good spread across your thighs like that?”

“Yes,” Tyson keens.

“Isn’t he _good_ , working his big hand over your dick like that?”

“Y-yeah.”

“He’s working _so_ hard for us, Tyson, he deserves a reward, doesn’t he? Don’t you think you should come for him?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Tyson wails.

“Then come for us, Tyson.”

It takes two more strokes of Gabe’s hand, and Tyson’s body locks up as he comes with a strangled yell. Pearlescent ropes of come slick the way for Gabe’s hand even more, dick jerking in his grasp. A tear rolls slowly down Tyson’s red cheek, his bitten red lips wide as he pants through his orgasm. Gabe keeps jerking them as the aftershocks roll through Tyson’s body, desperately chasing his own.

The hand on his ass squeezes and Nate breathes, right into his ear, “You’re such a good boy, Gabe.”

And Gabe, holy fucking shit, comes, _just like that_. 

It feels like disintegrating into tiny pieces of himself that know nothing except Tyson, and Nate, and pleasure. He’s distantly aware of his hand desperately stripping his cock as he comes and comes and _comes_ all over Tyson’s stomach and chest before letting go and tipping over onto his side between Nate and Tyson. Stars dance in front of his eyes as he struggles to catch his breath and waits for his limbs to come back online.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Gabe says at last. He turns to face a red-faced, pleased-looking Nate. “Nate, babe. Where did _that_ come from?”

Nate shrugs demurely and says while biting back a smile, “I contain multitudes.”

“Oh my god,” Tyson says. He drapes himself across Gabe’s abdomen, smearing come everywhere, to point accusingly at Nate. “You didn’t tell me you could do the Starship Captain voice. That is, like, blatantly unfair. We can’t have _two_ captains in this relationship!”

“Sometimes a family is two captains and a Tyson,” Gabe says consolingly and pats at Gabe’s hand. Tyson turns a bleary pout his way and opens his mouth to argue.

“Nope,” Nate interrupts. “No arguing now. It’s cuddle time, bitches.”

“But we’re dirty,” Tyson whines, and does absolutely nothing to resolve the situation.

Nate rolls his eyes and reaches over the side of the bed. He comes up with Tyson’s navy shirt, which he uses to wipe off the worst of the mess on them, placidly ignoring Tyson’s bitching. They rearrange themselves under the covers, Tyson and Nate tucked into either side of Gabe.

There’s still twenty minutes left in the _The Fast and the Fusion_ , so they settle in and pretend to watch it.

Gabe thinks about how lucky he is to have these incredible two men by his side, and he pulls them in tighter, burrowing his nose into Nate’s fluffy blond hair.

Tyson traces a pattern on Gabe’s bare skin with his and Nate’s intertwined hands.

“So I was wondering,” Tyson says slowly. “ _Now_ can we put in a request for a honeymoon leave?”

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> A character encounters plant pollen that other characters believe to cause extreme arousal; the plant pollen actually acts as a truth serum and the character hits on two other characters who he has feelings for; no characters engage in sexual or romantic activity caused by this pollen. There is a space battle in which one character is thought to be fatally injured, but he is not; the character does sustain a minor wound that is not described. Two characters are attacked at a diplomatic meeting and thrown in a jail cell; the attack is not described and the two characters are not severely damaged, traumatized, or tortured.
> 
>  
> 
> **Frequently Asked Questions**
> 
>  
> 
> Q: Is that a reference to--
> 
> A: Yes
> 
> Q: Are all of the made up names of planets and creatures named after--
> 
> A: [Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_horses)
> 
> You can find me [ on tumblr](http://dalmatienne.tumblr.com/) vague blogging about capitalism and hockey.


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